Unfinished Sympathy
by Caramel Charm
Summary: Vampires have taken over the world, there's a plan and Caroline wonders what all this got to do with her. Damon/Caroline, some Damon/Katherine but mostly Damon/his non-existent good side
1. Chapter 1: Don't Believe in Fear

_Disclaimer: The characters and other stuff in this fanfic belong to Lisa Jane Smith and Warner Bros. I don't make a dime with this story nor do I intend to._

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**Unfinished Sympathy**

**I.**

**The Fear  
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Chapter One

**_Don't believe in fear, don't believe in pain  
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When the Plague ended Caroline Forbes was less surprised than she should have been. Actually she was kind of relieved. While she had been as clueless as about anyone else on the planet about vampires before they killed millions of people with their virus as if they were bugs, there were a lot of muddled, half-forgotten fragments in her brain that finally made sense. While she still woke up from nightmares of dark eyes, pain and squeaky doors that never allowed her to leave, she now knew that they weren't just bits of her subconscious out to torture her but rather memories that had been too horrible to remember.

The Plague had spared Mystic Falls, the weather had made the roads into town impassable just when it broke out and soon no one even thought about making them passable again. After it was over Bonnie, Elena and her boyfriend had left town without much explanation. Just a phone number and a passionate plea to Caroline to never take off her necklace it contained vervain, a little purple flower. Later, in college, she learned about just how common it was, when she read Faulkner who called it _the only scent you could smell above the smell of horses and courage_.

It was a small miracle that she even could go to college. Her mom had been scared to let her leave her sight, let alone the state, so she made it only as far as Radford.

But no matter where she was people desperately tried to pretend everything was business as usual, doing their best to ignore the many graves, the many empty spaces, the half-empty class rooms which no optimist dared to think of as half-full. They also tried to their best to forget about the threat of total annihilation the threatened "flare-ups" had turned entire neighborhoods into ghost towns at the smallest mention of hunting down the vamps.

Everyone acted as if life went on it as it once had been and in some ways it did. The government governed, the courts made judgments, the police made arrests, businessmen made money, everyone tried to live as well as they could. Life really contained nothing supernatural but the threat of extinction of mankind itself.

But even death lost its novelty after a while. Caroline's life went on nearly as she had imagined her college to be if it hadn't been for the plague until the day she came into her dorm room and found sitting on her bed sat the very thing that had been haunting her dreams for so long.

"Your roommate invited me in," he said.

He looked the same as always, the same hypnotic eyes, the same unsettling smile, the same careless grace. He had always made Caroline feel like a klutzy, stupid child and which she believed she always had been to him.

He gave her the once over, his eyes rested on her necklace, accurately guessing what it is.

"Pretty necklace," he said while his eyes never left her neck. "Take it off."

"No," she said. The scent of vervain is above the scent of courage she reminded herself, even though she never really understood what that meant.

He smiled but it was an unpleasant smile, one that would accompany the sound of nails on chalkboard.

"How's your mother," he simply asked, his smile growing broader, meaner.

She thought of her mom, of the bite marks on her own neck which her mother had never seen and swallowed. Her hands reached for the clasp of the chain and then slowly pulled the chain from her neck. She kept it in her hand for a moment, her back turned to him, relishing the feel of free will, of the ability to remember before dropping it on her desk, amidst her make-up collection.

She turned back to him and looked him in the eye. If courage really had a scent it would be above all over her now and she still didn't know what it meant. Distantly she wondered if she ever would have the time to find out. His eyes were bright and then she felt the world blur around its edges.

"Tell me what happened during your prom."

His smile had disappeared. She was confused why he cared for her prom, even through the blur. Not even her mom had wanted to know anything about it.

"Nothing," she said. "Just Nothing."

"Not good enough," he said and the scary smile was back.

She scrambled for an answer, something that would lessen the pain, something that would make the pull to tell him every smallest detail go away. Until she realized that maybe she just should tell him.

"I wore a wonderful dress, strapless, pink with a large white belt," she said. He wanted to know after all. "I don't have it here otherwise I would show you how beautiful it is. I have one that is kind of similar though."

She went to her closet and grabbed the first dress she could get her hand on. The necklace, a part of her desperately told her, you have to touch it again. The world was dim and her hands trembled around the fabric.

"Actually this one doesn't look much like it. But I had just gotten a lipstick that went perfectly with the original dress." She frowned for effect. "Wait a minute, it is here around somewhere."

She reached for the lipstick and her hand touched briefly over the pendant as her finger passed it. Her head grew clearer don't let him notice, she told herself and then started to put the lipstick on her lips.

"Do you see," she asked.

He gave her distrustful look and for a second she wondered if her ruse was all for nothing. Except instead of muddling her world again, he simply told her to put on the dress.

"If you want to re-enact your prom, I won't stop you." He sounded bored. "Whatever helps you to remember."

She didn't hesitate; she could not risk losing herself again. She opened the buttons on her blouse, and then pulled it off. Her pants and shoes went the same way. Clad only in her bra and underwear, she reached for the dress and realized that it was really as strapless as her prom dress was. She would need a different bra or he would probably be able to tell that she was faking it. Quietly she went back to the closet and picked the first strapless bra she could find. It didn't match her underwear but that he wouldn't notice. She kept her back to him and discarded her old bra, put on the new one and finally pulled the dress over her head.

"My date was Matt," she continued as she struggled with the zipper on the back.

"You remember him, do you? He was so adorable and brought me a beautiful corsage lilies. And then my father took pictures. My shoes hurt."

The pull to tell him everything grew stronger again and she continued. She spoke faster: "We got there and there was some sort of punch. Matt got me a glass."

She reached for a water bottle standing on the floor and then reached for a glass, too far away from the necklace. She poured herself some water and drank. Her mouth was dry.

"It tasted horrible. Like someone had just mixed sugar water with food coloring."

She pulled a face. The water strangely tasted like the punch.

"Then Tyler joined us. He asked me to dance and then said" she stopped, she hadn't thought for ages about what Tyler had said. She had tried to forget it and apparently she had. "some really rude things." She put the glass down.

"I left him standing on the dance floor. He deserved nothing better."

She walked towards him, sitting on her bed, his eyes still attentively on her.

"I grabbed Matt's hand," she said as she grabbed his hand. "and asked him to dance. It was a slow dance."

She remembered now, Matt's hands had been around her waist and her forehead had nearly touched his.

She pulled him off the bed and was met with very little resistance. In a trance, she pulled him arms around her middle, put hers around his shoulders and then began to sway to memory of the song that played during the dance. She kept her eyes closed, to make it easier to maintain the illusion.

'Wake up, Caroline,' her inner voice said. 'Continue if you want to live.'

"It was really warm there, so we went outside."

The dorm room was a blur to her now, all she saw was the balcony she and Matt had been standing on and the darkness around it.

"We kissed," she swept her lips briefly across his. "Matt had his back to the railing, I saw over his shoulder "

And there in the darkness she saw something she had long-forgotten.

"I saw Elena out there. Except Elena was inside" It seemed so confusing but she knew that her memory was not wrong; it was vividly in front of her eyes.

"She carried something." She peered harder into the darkness. "A stone with some silver writing on it. It looked like leaves and Greek letters. Then she was gone."

She frowned. "Later, I asked Elena about being outside but she just said that I must be wrong. She and Stefan left soon after. Tyler and I went back to dancing."

She put some distance back between them and began to sway again. The dorm room came slightly back into focus.

"Can you draw the stone," Damon asked her.

She dropped out of his embrace and grabbed a pen and a yellow notepad out of her purse, sat down on the bed and began to draw to the best of her ability which wasn't much. She had never been much of an artist. He peered over her shoulder and absentmindedly ran his fingers to through strands of her hair.

As she drew, his cold fingers wandered down from her hair to her naked shoulders. She suppressed a shudder. He pulled down the zipper on the back of the dress, and finally opened the hooks of her bra. She tried not to react and kept her eyes firmly on the notepad as the drawing grew more and more elaborate and her clothes pooled around her waist.

"There," she finally said and turned around to look him the eyes. "It's done."

He gave the drawing a cursory glance, looked a little higher and said: "I knew I could make you remember."

He sounded almost proud while she felt exposed. She pushed against the blur in her mind and stuttered a slow "eyes up here."

It came out a lot less forceful than she would have liked but his eyes did go up there.

He pulled her toward him and asked: "Did you forget how much fun we used to have?"

Some distant part of her grew furious but her reply came out more detached than anything: "Was I supposed to?"

"Touché" he said.

His right hand cradled her face and it felt like he had done that before, even if she couldn't recall when. His head bend down and his lips met hers and the room began to spin again but, unlike before, it wasn't a dull sensation that dimmed reality. Instead it was as if she was intoxicated and every sensation had become part of a new heightened reality, sharper around the edges, every touch was more intensely felt. His hands wandered over her body and her clothes seemed to disappear. So did his. Ecstasy all too soon mixed with pain, as he violently consumed her, all of her until she passed out from exhaustion and blood loss.

* * *

When she woke up, surprised that she actually woke up at all, he was already up and about, throwing her things into bags, some of them garbage bags she noticed with discomfort as a particular expensive sweater went into one.

"You're up," he said. "Good."

He threw another bundle of her clothes into a bag.

"What do you think about transferring to Columbia?"

"Columbia," she echoed faintly as she sat up in her bed.

"New York, bright city lights, Broadway," he continued.

"What?" She still didn't comprehend what he was going on about.

"This is place's far too provincial for my taste. And the food is just terrible. Present company excluded, of course." He continued throwing her stuff together.

She frowned. "What does this got to do with me? What would I do in New York?"

He looked at her silently and then she realized that this had been something she had wanted all her life. Damon (Handsome, smart Damon!) wanted to her to go with him. And he wasn't just taking her anywhere but to New York, exciting, wonderful New York where she had wanted to go all her life. And he was taking her now, not in three years when she was finished with college, but now.

She smiled, excitedly. "Let me help you packing, you're going to mix everything up."

Hastily she put on her clothes and started to store away her make-up. There was something missing on that desk but she couldn't remember what it was.

"Have you already packed some stuff up here," she asked, looking at the desk in confusion.

Immediately she felt him behind her, his hands rested on her shoulders as he whispered into her ear: "No. Do you miss something?"

She looked in the mirror for the first time all morning. He met her gaze steadily; his left hand grasped her shoulder tightly next to the large, painful hickey on her neck.

"No," she admitted. "It just feels like something is missing."

She looked down on her desk, feeling stupid. "It's silly."

"Sure it is."

His hands slid along her arms and then finally embraced her waist from behind. He felt warm to touch. Her blood, she realized dimly. It was her blood that warmed him up from the inside. She took another look in the mirror and the hickey turned out to be a bite, the pattern of his teeth plainly visible upon her skin.

He nuzzled the unblemished side of her neck. His lips burned on her skin, she felt faint.

"Come on." He pulled away. "Time's a wastin'."

'Right,' she remembered. They wanted to go to New York.

She tried to recall what happened between them yesterday that he wanted her to be with him but her memory could provide her with only a few details. His smile. They had danced, she had worn her new dress (Had they been on a date?), his fingers in her hair, stroking down her naked back. It must have been a good date, she figured. He had been kind.

Soon her things were packed, she had eaten Nicole's yogurt (who had still not come back to their room) while Damon had gone to "fix her transfer" whatever that meant.

She took a long look around the room and realized that despite wanting to go to New York with Damon so badly, she really didn't want to leave. Her desk was empty but it still felt like something should have been on it, like something had gone missing. Her trashcan stood next to desk. Impulsively, she turned it upside down and emptied it over the desk.

"God, Caroline," she said to herself. "Looking through the trash like a hobo. What's wrong with you?"

At first it looked like the trashcan contained what it had promised to contain: empty food wrappers, thrown away papers and other things she preferred not to touch. But then enveloped in a ball of paper that had been an aborted English essay, she found a silver pendant on a chain. It was cute but she couldn't remember owning it. Nor could she remember Nicole wearing it either.

She picked it up and held it against the light. It was really pretty, too pretty for the trash anyway. She swept the rest of the trash back into the can and then went off to wash her hands and the pendant. Afterwards she threw it into her purse and forgot it about it - again.

When Damon came back, she felt weirdly exhausted. In the car she pretty much passed out immediately.

* * *

When Caroline woke up, she woke up to a vision of dim white and sparkling light. When her world came into focus, she realized she was in a bedroom, colored all in white white upholstery, white linens, a white carpet, and dim lights that gave it a homey vibe. Through the large window she could see the New York skyline. It was night.

Her things, trash bags and all, had been carelessly thrown into a corner of the room a dark stain against the room's color scheme.

She got out of bed, checking quickly for new bruises. But aside from her shoes, she was still fully clothed and no new pains, bruises or bites could be felt.

Looking for something to eat, she made her way to the living room (also very white, very clean, very modern) and then to the kitchen. But the fridge's interior was like the rest of the apartment: white, immaculately clean, and empty. The kitchen's cupboards contained pots that had never been used, utensils that looked like they belonged into a surgeon's toolbox and plates that looked like food would blemish them rather than giving them a purpose.

Abandoning the search for food, she took a closer look at the skyline through the living room windows, trying to place the apartment in what little she knew about New York's geography.

Down below the apartment there was a large dark square, only sporadically illuminated, and with a little gasp of surprise she realized that it was the Central Park.

"Like what you see?" Damon's voice came suddenly from behind her.

Turning around with a bigger gasp of surprise, she said: "Oh God, don't scare me like this."

Vampire, she realized once again. He's a vampire. How could she have forgotten? Her heart raced in her chest.

"Did you expect someone else," he asked - an unreadable smile on his face.

She blinked at him dumbly for a second. 'He's teasing me,' she realized and then came another startling realization. "This could turn nasty.'

"No," she finally said.

She paused, gathering her wits. 'He must be in a decent mood, Caroline,' she told herself. 'Don't be scared. Seize the day.'

"Actually yes, I expected someone to bring me some food. I'm hungry and nothing in this apartment looks like it can be eaten."

Dimly a memory of their relationship surfaced and she amended herself with a smile: "Present company excluded."

He seemed genuinely amused now, so she continued, hoping to keep him that way: "Nice apartment, by the way. Did you win the lottery?"

His face became unreadable. "I didn't need to."

He looked at her for a second while she imagined the previous apartment owner's bloodless body rotting under the immaculate floorboards.

"Come on, get dressed. We're gonna grab some food."

* * *

The entire way to the restaurant Caroline wondered if she was on the menu. But by the looks of the place, upscale and so crowded that the maitre got a really long look from Damon before he got them a table, she was nearly certain that if anything she would only be dessert.

Briefly she wondered what kind of dessert she would make, probably some pastel-colored pastry, while Damon ordered for both of them. She briefly thought about protesting (_steak tartare_ sounded like the steak got sick with some exotic disease) but then decided to save her energy for a worthier topic.

She fingered the edge of the white tablecloth for a second then remembered something she had read what seemed a really long time ago. A story by Faulkner, something about the smell of courage. Above all things. Right, the smell of courage is above all things other than horses. Or something. For a second she was puzzled why this ever spoke to her so much that she remembered it now, here with Damon.

She shook it off. 'Courage, Caroline,' she tried to pep talk herself. 'Just courage.'

She looked him squarely in the eye. "I have a question."

She gave her voice what she hoped a firm edge: "And don't blinker me before we at least talked about this."

His eyebrow rose.

"Blinker?"

"You know the thing when I forget or want to do stuff when I should want something else." She bit her lips before continuing. "Like going to New York."

"I thought you wanted to go New York?"

"I did," she admitted quietly and then more firmly: "But I know that I also really wanted to stay in Radford. I know you love your blonde cheerleader clichs but I'm not a total idiot who can't tell which of these things I've wanted and which one you did."

He leaned forward and instinctively she turned her head away, averting his gaze: "Let me finish, okay?"

Her voice trembled: "I just want to know what I'm doing here. Is there a point to this?"

She turned back, blinking away those pesky tears gathering in her eyes: "Why me? Why now?"

He silently looked at her but not in the way that would have made her questions disappear. He looked down on the table, and straightened a knife that hadn't gone astray in the first place.

"Can't tell you," he finally told the table. "Everyone's better off with you not knowing."

"Everyone? Who's everyone?"

He looked contemptuous: "Who do you think?"

"Your brother?"

He shrugged.

"Elena? Bonnie?"

He shrugged again but smiled.

"You're lying."

She was getting really upset now: "Bonnie would never agree to this"

She clasped her trembling hands together under the table, out of his sight. "She would never."

"Really," his bored voice mocked her. "When was the last time you talked to her?"

"Eight months ago," she said with as much confidence as she could still muster. "But I've known her since first grade. I know her better than you ever could."

If Damon even heard her little speech he certainly didn't react to it. "I've talked to her three days ago."

He grimaced. "And that was just a little bit too much information for you."

"Bonnie is too much information for me?" She panicked, realizing what he might do. "Damon, please don't."

The tears she had suppressed earlier started to run. "Please. Don't take her away from me."

She stared at him, unfocused and wide-eyed.

"You look like shit," he told her roughly.

Her face crumbled. He looked at her; there was nothing in his eyes, no feeling - just nothing.

"Excuse me," she said and ran off to the ladies room. The Caroline in the mirror sported unfashionable panda eyes.

It didn't take long to fix her make-up. Putting a smile on her face again, took much, much longer.

When she came back her dinner was being served. The _steak tartare_ turned out to be an uncooked, decorated hamburger patty.

"Thanks," she mumbled, not even trying to mask her lack of enthusiasm.

"Eat up," Damon said cheerfully.

Thankfully it appeared that he hadn't noticed her little breakdown earlier. "Crying takes a lot of energy out of people."

Or not.

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The dessert was much better. He had ordered her creamy custard filled concoction surrounded by white chocolate and raspberries. She loved every single bite and in the end even licked the spoon clean.

"Yummy," she said as she laid the spoon down.

"Let's go then."

He had been impatient through the entire last half an hour.

"Don't we need to pay?"

"It's on the house," he said nonchalantly and walked away.

She quickly grabbed her coat and quickly followed him.

Back in the apartment he unceremoniously and roughly pushed her face forward into the nearest wall.

"What" she began before she felt her shirt being torn down.

Then, painfully, his teeth in her upper back. For a second she thought she would pass out from the shock and the pain but that moment passed and the pain merely stretched for what seemed an endless long time. When he finally let up, black spots were swimming across her vision and her knees failed to keep her upright.

She slid down the wall, her head leaned against the wall, and she closed her eyes, exhausted. Her shirt hung off her shoulder in tatters and she felt cheap, violated, and tawdry. A sob came unbidden from her throat.

He picked her up, carried her to the bedroom and dumped her on the bed. She opened her eyes and found him bent over her, staring at her. He was blurry through her tears. But the bite began to hurt less and it hadn't really all that bad in the first place, perhaps she had been only a bit surprised. He had been so careful, kind of sweet actually, after all.

She smiled dreamily at him and raised her to stroke a wayward curl behind his ear. But the muscles in her arm wouldn't really obey her and she felt strangely faint. Damon frowned at her, then rolled eyes then bent down further to kiss her. She thoroughly enjoyed his kisses even feeling as weak as she did now. Then there was a taste of copper pennies (blood, she realized later) on his tongue and she felt better, stronger, more awake, more alive than she had been in weeks.

She embraced him with her arms, raking her nails down his back as his kisses went down further south.

He kept her awake for the rest of the night and the bite on her back was forgotten. When she looked into the mirror of the immaculately white bathroom the next morning she couldn't even see it anymore.


	2. Chapter 2: Where's My Mind?

_Not mine. Still not making money, still not intending to._

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Chapter Two

_**Where's my mind?**_

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Columbia made Caroline feel lost. While she didn't know what Damon had done to get her into the school, it didn't felt right for her to be there. She felt like an imposter; she didn't belong. That's why she didn't realize at first the real reason the other students in her classes threw so many dirty looks in her direction. Only when she saw a girl cross herself on her way to philosophy class she realized that they thought she was one of _them _and the wide berth she had been given by other students had been out of fear.

She fingered the scarf she had wrapped tightly around her neck. It hid an ugly bite Damon had left on her neck earlier this morning. He had not commanded her to wear it but she could not bear the thought of all these people seeing her as weak as she was. But as the day went on and she saw more and more people crossing themselves when they spotted her, avoiding her eyes, and going to the other side of the room when she came near she could no longer bear it.

"Courage," she said to herself. "Courage is above all."

She didn't know what that meant but she knew it was important.

She walked into the next bathroom, pinned her hair up and then walked into the lounge, grabbed a sandwich, walked to next empty table, put down her lunch and unwrapped her scarf.

She avoided looking at her neck when she looked in mirrors these past few days. Actually she had been avoiding looking at a lot of her body parts. But she knew it looked gross. Damon's bites were never delicate; they were huge, angry bruises.

But the silence that settled around the lounge as she sat down was disturbing. She felt the wave of pity and morbid curiosity as if it were a physical force. Silence was quickly replaced with a cacophony of hushed conversations as people for the first time knowingly observed someone who had been bitten by a vampire, saw for the first time the proof that all those stories were true after all.

Her sandwich tasted like sawdust. The lounge became busier; most of the people in there had given up pretending that they weren't shamelessly looking at the freak.

She sped up on the sandwich - she didn't want to be stared at for much longer. A long-haired brunette in a peasant blouse sat down on her table. She smiled at Caroline, the first nice smile Caroline received in what appeared to be forever even though Damon had only dropped into her life a few days before. From him she had gotten all sort of smiles, except they all meant something else, not a single one of them appeared to be made of kindness.

"Hi," the girl said. "I'm Bee. I hope you don't mind if sit here, it's kind of the last available seat here."

It was not, Caroline noted, and that genuine smile suddenly seemed be as phony as anything. But she was so starved for a normal conversation with someone who couldn't make bend her to his will with a mere look that she smiled and finds the same perkiness that has gotten through high school.

"I don't mind. I'm Caroline," her smile grew wider as she pretended that the brunette in front of her did look as much into her eyes as she stared at the ugly bite on her neck.

"I just transferred from Radford. The one in Virginia, not in Washington. Don't ask me why, it's a really long and boring story. It's amazing here, have you been here long?"

The words began tumbling out of her and she went off tangents from the bare-boned polite answers she received from Bee. Only when the answers turned to questions about her life, her significant others, her origin she began to falter.

"Where did you get that bite," Bee finally asked.

"I don't know," Caroline lied but then reconsidered. "Actually I can't tell you. I know but I can't say. If I could I would."

She thought about it for second. "It's not something I chose, you know. It's…" she paused. "… just something."

Bee nodded as if she understood. Caroline doubted that she did. How could she if she herself couldn't.

"It was nice meeting you, Bee" she said and stood up.

She left the lounge that was packed beyond capacity now. People gave way to her as she walked through the crowd which was both awkward and kind of nice. The looks she was given were no longer hostile, and that was all that mattered.

* * *

She left class early that afternoon, got on the subway to Brooklyn, changed trains thrice, and got back to Manhattan and Damon's apartment. The place, as clinically modern as it was with its glass surfaces and white-in-white color scheme, still gave her the creeps.

The doorman greeted her and held the door open; it was nearly as she belonged. She was wearing her scarf again. Not only to hide the marks but also to also to ward off the cold. The elevator was empty and for the first time that day she felt like she could breathe. But the ride was short and as she stood in front of the apartment door, her nerves felt as if they were vibrating. She raised her hand in front of her face and detachedly watched it shake.

Fear, she realized. She didn't want to go into the apartment and face Damon, she wanted to turn around and never come back. Only the knowledge that she wouldn't even make it to the elevators stopped her. Courage, she told herself. He won't hurt you worse than he already has.

"Did you have a nice day," he asked as a way of greeting when she hesitantly opened the door. "I heard some interesting things about a Columbia student today."

He smiled the scary smile as she dropped her bag on the floor in the hallway. There was very little she could do now.

"Blonde, about your height, big, bad bite mark on her neck … Does this sound like anyone you know?"

She pulled off her scarf, then her coat, refusing to take the bait. No answer would be the right one.

She finally looked him in the eyes and he raised his eyebrows. He wanted an answer and she had clearly missed her cue.

Feeling stupid and rebellious at once, she said: "Do you mind if I do?"

He advanced at her silently, his face unreadable. She took a step backwards until her back met the wall. He closed in her on and then put his hands flat besides her head on the wall and leaned forward. His eyes turned dark and his face changed. She squeezed her eyes together and waited for the pain.

"It changes my plans," he whispered below her ear.

His fingers dug painfully into her upper arms. They would leave finger-shaped bruises.

Then he let her go. She opened her eyes, his face was back to normal and he seemed calm. The calm before the storm, she noted rather hysterically.

"But not necessarily for the worse."

He took a step back and gave her a look of close scrutiny. "You like attention, don't you?"

He didn't wait for an answer. Instead he took her hand and pulled her toward him again. His face had turned monstrous again.

"Hmm, what place to pick…," he pulled at the collar of her shirt. "Do you have any preferences?"

The fabric tore quickly – and yet another shirt bit the dust - his cold hands toyed with her bra strap for a second before tearing it as well as he exposed what lay underneath. She trembled, whatever was left of her courage disappeared.

"It wouldn't be very visible here," he said as he traced the contours of her left breast. "Unless…"

His index finger drew a straight line to her collarbone.

"I can aim a little higher, directly over your heart. How would you like that, Caroline?"

His head bent down and he licked the spot he had indicated earlier.

He came up and cocked his head.

"Aww, you're no fun when you're scared."

She stared at him then looked down at herself, confused.

"Damon, what happened to my clothes?"

"We've just a little too much fun. Don't worry your pretty little head about it."

"But-"

He shushed her and put his index finger across her mouth.

"Don't worry about it."

"Okay," she said automatically.

Then she smiled at him in the way that she hoped would give him the right idea.

"You know you're kinda overdressed here. We really should equal things out."

She playfully opened the top button of his shirt. He stopped her, grabbed her hands and smiled that lovely, wicked smile of his.

"I like the way you think."

He kissed her palm, gave it a quick lick before sucking on her fingers. It felt weird. Weird but good.

He let go off her fingers, pulled her closer and started kissing her neck. When he finally bit down on the upper fleshy bits of her boobs it didn't hurt all that much.

* * *

Later, when they were both dressed again and she was no longer woozy, he seemed so tender and careful about her. He didn't grab her too hard when he pulled her up from the floor; he brought her even a glass of water and a sandwich – and he smiled at her in a way that nearly seemed sweet.

He mustered her for a bit while she ate. It made her self-conscious – How much mayo and calories did this sandwich really have? Would it make her fat? Had it already made her fat?

She nearly put it down in disgust but remembered that Damon had gotten it for her. If she rejected it now he would be unhappy, disappointed and possibly never get her anything to eat again. No more Chinese take-out, no more delivered groceries, nothing.

She was barely done with her sandwich when he pulled her and told her to get ready.

"For what," she asked.

"Shopping. You need some new clothes."

* * *

She hadn't known what to expect. (She never knew anything when Damon got these strange ideas, probably because he never told her what those ideas were actually about. A mystery wrapped in an enigma and an annoying one at that.) But when he stopped in front of a high-end designer store she had to squelch her protest. 'Not worth it,' her inner voice told her. 'He'll do what he wants and this would only put him in a bad mood.'

Damon marched inside, expecting her to follow. He went straightforwardly for the prettiest saleslady in the entire store – perfect face, perfect body, probably an ex-model, Caroline noted. Not that she was jealous. Not over Damon.

He talked to her for a bit and then the saleslady came over to her, her smile perfectly polite, not a hint of arrogance despite Caroline's wardrobe, which looked pretty but whose price tag wouldn't get her a belt in here.

"So you need a gown?"

Her smile never wavered and she looked downright _nice_.

"Something really eye-catching?"

"I guess so," Caroline said.

Sure, she needed perhaps a few new shirts, but if Damon thought she needed a gown she wasn't going to argue.

The salesgirl marched toward a dress that looked both extremely expensive and - if Caroline was honest to herself - kind of whorish. It was floor-length but what it covered at the bottom it revealed at the top. There was hardly any material in the back and the front would reveal a lot of her boobs. Perhaps more than she even had.

"You should try it on," she said.

With horror Caroline realized what that dress would reveal and turned to Damon. He simply cocked his head as if to say "do it."

With a sinking feeling she followed her into the changing room and then took a long time to get out of her clothes and into the dress. It did look nice on her – or would have if it hadn't revealed the ugly bites on her upper body.

"Is everything fine," the salesgirl asked from outside. "Can I see?"

In for a penny, in for a pound, Caroline figured and opened the door and saw the girl's polite mask drop. Gone was the smile, gone was the sympathy. There was only shock and repulsion. 'Fuck you,' Caroline thought.

"I'll take it," she said aloud and closed the door again.

She ripped the gown off her body, got back into her clothes, feeling utterly humiliated. Outside she found Damon doing that thing with the salesgirl that should have gotten her the gown for free. Except that it turned out that he had actually paid for it.

"What did you do with her," she asked outside the store.

"What do you think?"

He genuinely appeared to be interested in her answer which made her feel like this was another test she would fail. She decided to avoid an answer.

"You should have asked for a discount."

He rolled his eyes.

"Couldn't have her remembering me, could I?"

"And I'm fair game?"

He smiled. It was weird. Not all that smug it looked actually somewhat foreign on his face.

"You'll need some jewelry to go with that dress."

* * *

She didn't even need to take off the scarf at the jeweler. Damon outright asked for earrings and chose with very little input from her (not that she gave him some besides a general coo of delight) large, intricate, golden ones with blue stones that matched her eyes (according to the salesman - Damon ignored him) and felt heavy on her ears.

When she saw the price tag, she felt as if the blood loss from earlier had finally caught up with her. But she wore them gladly when they left the store. Aside from the episode in the changing room (which really had been her own fault) Damon had been really sweet to her the whole day.

He took her to dinner and on the way she admired the earrings, his gift to her, in every reflective surface. And this time she didn't even think about the dish he ordered for her. After all it didn't sound like a disease and as giddy as she was still from receiving his beautiful gift that was enough for her.

Only later that night (he had taken only a little nibble from her wrist this time, she had had barely time to feel the pain) she wondered why he had been so generous in the first place. She didn't find an answer.

* * *

The next day she wore long sleeves in class. Her cleavage was modestly covered, too, and her scarf was in its customary place. People turned their heads and stared in her direction anyway. Whispers broke out like a contagious disease everywhere she went.

Caroline had been a cheerleader – a popular one – so this wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the phenomenon. Except, as she realized with dismay, this time the whispers were not made out of jealousy or gossip, they were made out of pity. The same pity they would have given a victim of a sensational crime.

Things went from bad to worse when she was asked to go to the Dean of Student Affairs. The Dean, a Mr. Katzenberg, briefly quizzed her about her course work and then began to pry into her life. He asked about her family (possibly trying to start with the "polite" questions) and she realized that she hadn't thought about any of them in ages.

"They died in the Plague," she said, trying to recall the details and failing to even conjure up any images of their funeral.

She must have been numb and insane with grief. Had there even been a funeral?

Mr. Katzenberg apologized immediately and then once more when he asked after her friends and received the same answer.

"Did she have any other family, or perhaps a significant other," he asked accompanied by a_ significant _look.

She gave him back a significant silence.

And so it went on for a while. He was trying to figure out the origins of her bite marks and she was refusing to satisfy his curiosity.

In the end he gave the number of a domestic abuse hotline. It was an awkward moment for both them.

On the subway home her hand curled around the piece of paper in her coat pocket and she stared at it for the longest time. She got off one stop too early and there began to look in her purse for her cell phone. She found a lot of things she didn't need - gum, a Radford homework assignment, even the necklace from the trashcan of her old dorm. But her cell was nowhere to be found.

"My cell's gone," she said as she came into the door of their apartment. "Have you seen it?"

Damon, watching Sandra Lee making yet another semi-automatic homemade monstrosity, didn't even turn around to utter a no, obviously too enraptured by the boozy antics to take his eyes off the screen.

For some weird reason this gave Caroline some strength to comment on his choice of programming.

"You know this doesn't really qualify as cooking," she said.

"Your sense of fun doesn't really qualify as one either."

His tone was clipped and he still hadn't even looked at her which pissed her off _a lot_.

"Maybe it's the company I keep. It sucks the fun right of me."

She paused and then continued not wanting him to cut her down before she was even finished. Not knowing what else to say she started with the strangest moment of her day.

"Someone gave me the number of a domestic abuse line today."

She stopped. This sounded. She forced herself to be perky.

"And it was so awkward. I mean… You know… Do I look like…," she broke off.

Even she knew that she did look like she needed that number even if it wouldn't help.

"It was so dumb," she continued, the spark of bravado gone as Damon finally turned around to look her in the eye.

"So what did you suddenly need your cell phone for now?" He raised his eyebrows, hardly amused.

Thinking up a quick lie, she bit back, using his earlier words against him.

"To prank call them. Duh. As anyone with any sense humor would have done."

He got up and walked toward her, slowly. It was unnerving. She backed away but caught herself.

"My cell," she began, her voice only trembled a tiny little bit. "I want it back."

He stopped. "And you think I have it?"

"I had it back in Virginia," she said. "Before you—"

"Stop talking." He rolled his eyes. "Your screeching gives me a headache."

He shot her an odd look then. "Who do you want to call anyway? Is the afterlife accepting calls these days?"

Her mouth dropped. "How do you know…?"

He waved her comment off. "Word gets around. But you're fine so it isn't all that bad, right?"

There was a questioning tone in his voice but suddenly she couldn't focus on anything but the huge emptiness where her mom, her dad, Bonnie, Matt and Elena used to be. Was this grief - this hole in her heart and mind where they once had been?

"Fine?" She echoed the word mechanically. "I'm fine?"

"You are," he said and his eyes burned with intensity and she wasn't sure what had set her off to verbally attack him like this.

"Maybe."

She might have conceded his point but she was still Caroline Forbes, she didn't give in that easily. "But I have a ton of assignments I need to get done. I think my American Literature professor wants me to read every novel ever written. By Monday."

She noticed for the first time what he had been watching on TV.

"Sandra Lee?" She bit her lip to not directly laugh in his face and failed. "She's a drinking game all by herself – and she's winning."

As she laughed, he wandered off, back to the TV and Sandra. She was about to feel bad for laughing until she realized what Sandra was about to stack three store-bought cakes on top of each other and then broke out into another fit of giggles.

"They're showing a marathon," Damon said from the couch, waving a whiskey bottle he had conjured up from who-knows-where. "Wanna play?"

* * *

After quite a number swigs from Damon's bourbon and only three-and-a-half recipes The Sandra Lee Drinking Game turned into The Sandra Lee Strip Game (the rules were murky, pretty much everything meant losing clothes). Nakedness turned to fun times and fun times turned into hunger. They ordered in. Damon snacked on the pizza delivery guy, Caroline snacked on the pizza and then they shared the weed Damon had convinced pizza boy to part from.

They watched some weird nature documentary about Alaskan fish. It was fascinating. Somewhere between the carp and the other carp, they both got hungry again. She snacked on some leftover pizza and Damon snacked on her. She didn't know if it was the booze, the weed or the food but him drinking blood from her inner thigh didn't even really hurt. Instead it made her feel her funny in her discarded pants and by the looks of things she wasn't the only one.

One thing turned predictably to another.

Afterwards they watched a Disney movie about squirrels. It was inspiring. It was so inspiring that she got up, out of Damon's sleepy embrace, and started to dig in her purse for a pen to start drawing herself.

"Girl," came the drowsy question from Damon. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to paint a picture," she proudly declared.

That woke him up. "What the fuck?"

"I've decided to paint a picture," she repeated, more slowly this time, enunciating every word clearly.

"Why?"

He was actually frowning at her. Maybe even judging her, but Caroline wasn't sure about that. But it made telling him harder. She still did though. Truth's important in any relationship.

"You're pretty."

And with that she had finally found a writing utensil. Unfortunately it was a neon yellow highlighter. Caroline still held it up like a trophy.

"Look. I found a pen." She frowned, puzzled. "What did I want to paint again?"

"Barbra Streisand," came the dry reply from the couch.

"Hey!" Now she was offended.

"I've seen that movie."

She dropped the highlighter.

"You know," she began and walked towards him. "A lot of high school's a big blur."

She wagged her finger in his face: "Probably no thanks you," and dropped down on the couch.

"Anyway… this one's…"

She sighed, getting lost of the memory of that perfect evening.

"It was before… well, you."

A quick look into his direction confirmed that he appeared to listen attentively (at least his eyes were still open), so she continued: "We stole the DVD from Jeremy along with his stash. I think Bonnie called Matt, pretending to be my mom. She was so good at it. He nearly pissed himself in fear."

She smiled to herself, relaxing into the couch. "I miss her."

Something was off about that thought so Caroline shook it off.

"It was such a fun evening."

Again she got lost in the memory of it.

"It was pretty amazing," she finally said.

She took a closer look at him.

"Although not as pretty as you," she said with wonderment. "I should draw you. You're like a painting."

She groped the ground with one hand, not even looking at what she was doing.

"I think I had a pen somewhere around here. I should paint you, you're really pretty."

She drew her brows together.

"I should it paint _on you_, you're pale as a sheet anyway."

"Enough," he said and got up to pick her up from the couch. "It's bed time for you."

She flailed. Kind of, this much she had to admit.

"Don't you want a picture of your favorite person on your body?"

"What?"

He sounded like he couldn't believe the thing she just said. But she knew better.

"You're a total narcisass… you know what I mean."

She stopped flailing, suddenly feeling drained.

"It surely ain't me."

Suddenly she remembered what she had forgotten about all evening and she went back to trying to struggle out of his arms.

"What about my reading?"

He put her on the bed.

"Does this place look like it came with a library?"

Caroline looked at the white walls. No books.

"Not really."

She sat up und swung her legs off the bed.

"We need to go to the bookstore."

He caught her when she stumbled, getting up.

"You need to go nowhere but back to bed. Come on, go to sleep," he said with a surprising degree of patience.

She stared at him in amazement.

"You're so pretty."

She reached up to touch his face.

"Has anyone ever told you how pretty you are?"

"Yes. You. Several times. Today."

He did that thing with his face where he didn't smile but look like he wanted to. She liked it better than when he did the opposite.

"Whose books do you need anyway?"

She thought for a second and then listed what little she still recalled from her book list: "Dead. White. Male. American. 20th Century."

"Really? Could you be any more specific?"

She pretended to give that idea a momentary thought before she shook her head: "No."

He bent down and pushed her back onto the bed.

"Okay," he said and looked deeply into her eyes.

She smiled. 'Still pretty,' she thought.

"Sleep now," he said.

As she fell asleep she felt strangely content.

When she woke up she had the hangover from hell.

On the floor under the window laid dozens of books.

* * *

_Okay this is still the first half of this story but I need your help with something concerning the second in which the story continues to be told from Damon's point of view. I need a title. My working title neither works nor is much of a title. I need something short that's opposite "The Fear" but not, like, "scary" or "hide the blood bags, Damon's coming." But not like super-fluffy either._


	3. Chapter 3: The Unvanquished

_First of all: Still not mine, etc etc._

_Second: Thank you, , **rock'n'rollbitch, WaffleMuncher, SamDeanWinchesterLove, SunnyRosVille, Faith-Catherine** for your reviews. Your kind words mean a lot to me. I knew from the very beginning that this story would never be the most popular of things – and this is kind of the understatement of the century__ – __so I'm so glad that you someone out there likes it. :)_

_

* * *

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Chapter Three

_**The Unvanquished**_

* * *

"You're going to do me a favor," Damon said later that week.

They had spent a good deal of the Sunday morning already in bed and now lay next to each other. Caroline was still trying to catch her breath but she still could think of a lot of favors that she would have been more than happy to bestow.

She propped herself on one arm, smiled down at him and said with more than a hint of suggestiveness in her voice.

"What kind of favor?"

In a quick move he grabbed her by the shoulders and rolled them over.

"Not that kind of favor."

The expression on his face might have passed for tender if she didn't know better.

"I've got a ticket for the Met tonight."

"The Met?"

She really didn't like the direction this thing was headed.

He continued as if she never interrupted him in the first place.

"You're going."

"Am I?"

And then quickly before he did that thing where she ended up doing things she didn't want to do without even realizing: "In my new and extremely revealing dress?"

"In your new and expensive dress that makes you look much better…"

She pulled a face, annoyed.

"Finish that sentence and I'll get the scissors to cut it into itty bitty pieces."

He gave her a patronizing and leery smile.

"Don't worry you look great without it."

"You've never seen it me with it."

His index finger ran a line over her collarbone.

"I've got_ imagination_."

She held his hand still.

"Just one question," she said. "Why?"

He got serious for a moment.

"If you want to be found, you need to send a signal."

"And the signal?"

His hand freed itself from her grip and he went back to exploring her shoulder.

He didn't look at her but then said with a smirk: "You're my beacon of light."

"That's probably the nicest thing you ever said to me," she noted with a hint of sarcasm.

He kissed her neck.

"How careless of me."

His kisses went to her bloody shoulder, licking up some dried blood.

Then he got back to the subject at hand: "Tonight…" A last lick. "Try not to get yourself photographed there."

Realizing that he was for real, she decided to mock him outright.

"In the age of camera phones? We live in the 21st Century. Get with the time, gramps."

He looked briefly put off by the 'gramps' part before he started laughing.

"Has anyone ever told you're a magnificent bitch if you want to be?"

"Yes. You," she continued to mock him. "How often I don't know since you delete my memory more often than your browser history."

She tried to act liked she had actually seen that browser history and had been properly horrified: "Zoophiles-r-us? Really?"

"I'm an animal, baby," he said.

He grabbed her wrists, pulled them above her head and then bit down on the fleshy part of her unmarred her shoulder. With his human teeth. It felt good.

"You know it."

Another human nibble.

"And love it."

She sighed with as much air as a first year drama student would.

"I can't lie – I do."

His nibbling moved lower.

"Oooh, keep doing that."

Predictably enough, he stopped and instead began to lecture her like a pompous ass: "The Met banned cell phones a while back. Even gramps knows that."

She pondered this for a second.

"You know this gramps thing is creepy as hell?"

"And probably not true anyway."

He considered this for a second.

"You're not related to Marjorie Sampson by any chance?"

She pushed him away and sat up.

"What?"

"Don't get this wrong," he said while he comfortably reclined against the pillows. "I'm not saying that John Sampson Forbes was my kid – Marjorie fooled around a lot – but that was one hastily arranged marriage."

She looked at him in wide-eyed horror.

"So," he asked with an air of nonchalance." Are you related to her?"

"I don't know," she said, still horrified. "I don't know."

The name finally registered: " Forbes? Oh my God!"

She rushed out of bed.

"I need a shower."

Instead of heading to the bathroom she just stood in the middle of the room and buried her head in her hands.

"I need a new life."

She felt two arms embracing her middle from behind and froze.

"I was kidding," his voice whispered in her left ear. "Marjorie was ugly as sin and twice as uptight and I would have never touched that with a ten-foot pole."

She peeked through her hand.

"Honest?"

"Scout's Honor," he said. "Sworn on my father's grave."

"No, seriously, Damon," she said. "I draw the line at incest."

"I mean… I gotta draw the line somewhere," she added with hysteria creeping into her voice.

"Come on," he said and turned her around to face him. "Look at me."

Her hands were pulled from her face and he looked at her with a considerable degree of honesty.

"I was just kidding," he said.

Then he added: "Forget about it. I have."

There was something that she had wanted to ask him but she couldn't really recall what it was. Something about food, maybe? The light streamed through the window, highlighting his pectoral muscles. She bit her lip in concentration, trying to recall her question but her hand reached out to trace the outlines of his biceps.

"You know that technically you owe me two favors now?"

This wasn't the question she had wanted to ask but judging by the smile on his face it would do very nicely.

* * *

The dress revealed too much, she thought. She had twisted her hair into an up-do and the earrings drew plenty of attention to the fresh bite on her neck. The low cut of the dress showed off the half-healed bites on her left breast and on her back. She wished for some sort of cuffs to hide the bites on her wrist or sleeves to hide the bruises on her upper arms. At least her lower half was completely covered, she thought. Small favors. The bites and bruises on her thighs made her look seriously skanky.

When she finally made it out of the bedroom, after putting extra care into her make-up - 'Think classy, Caroline. Think Jackie Kennedy.' - he handed her a flask with vodka.

Classy with a capital K.

"Liquid courage," he called it.

"Smells like it," she said as she took it.

Something niggled in the back of her brain, something about the smell of courage and horses. It was important but she didn't know why. 'Nothing smelled like horses and courage, did it?'

She frowned at the flask. The thought seemed incomplete like something vital was missing. She handed the flask back to Damon.

"I think I better face La Boheme sober."

"Your choice."

He raised the flask.

"Cheers."

And drunk deeply.

"I'll drive," he said as he put the booze away. "You can't take a cab looking like this."

She looked him with a lot of skepticism. "You think that's wise?"

"Don't worry. I'll steal a car that won't be traced back to us."

"Actually I was worried about you driving under influence," she said dryly. "But now you've reassured me that we are gonna take a stolen car I feel so much better already."

"Never been arrested," he said with a cheeky grin. "Many have tried, all have failed."

'Should have tried harder,' she thought.

"So reassuring." She sneered at him.

"Sassy." He sneered right back at her. "Pull your claws back in, pussycat. You have only thirty minutes left for your date with the Met's patrons."

"But that's on the other side of Manhattan?"

"I've never been arrested."

He said it with a smile on his face."You know this."

* * *

He stole a Lexus from some unsuspecting tourist at the Waldorf. They made it in time but only barely.

Damon had gotten a lot less happy with every red light and had began to ignore them altogether while grumbling how he should have stolen a police car instead. Caroline had just wished she had drunken the vodka earlier.

When he finally dropped her off at the opera – with no jacket in freezingly cold February – her knees were shaking. She clutched her ticket, pulled the neckline of her dress up half an inch and squared her shoulders. It didn't help much, she still felt as exposed as the lighthouse she was supposed to be.

She got the first strange looks on the square in front of the building. She chalked them up to her revealing over-the-top dress.

The looks at the door with the lights fully illuminating her bitten and bruised skin were harder to will away.

But it was the stares by the few stragglers inside who still hadn't taken their seats were impossible to ignore. They didn't even try to disguise their looks of curiosity, disgust and pity. Soon some people actually came out of the auditorium to stare at her.

Caroline practically rushed to take her seat but the stares followed her. Even when the performance started, more people looked her than at the events on stage.

She prayed for the break and when it came, she rushed toward the toilet and hid in a bathroom stall.

'You're Caroline Forbes,' she thought to herself. 'No one needs to pity you. Your life's fantastic. You're better than this. You're fucking better than them.'

From the outside women came rushing in and there was only one subject.

"Have you seen…"

"Can you imagine…"

"…blood donor…"

"... if she was my daughter I would never…"

"…bruises all over her arms…"

"…vampire bait…"

"…her parents must be ashamed…"

"…poor girl…"

"…seen that dress in Vogue…"

And so it went until Caroline's ears burned and tears began to run down her cheeks. She sobbed into her left hand balled into a fist, so the people outside couldn't hear her. The break ended, people left the bathroom. She stayed in the stall.

Ten minutes passed; twenty minutes passed. Her tears dried, her sobs died down. Thirty minutes passed.

She left the bathroom quickly and the building even more quickly. If she could have managed in her heels, she would have run.

She stood at the curb for exactly five seconds – five seconds long enough to feel like a hooker – before the stolen Lexus turned up.

"You're early," Damon said when she got in.

This made her snap.

"And you're a rotten son of a bitch but you don't see me complaining."

Caroline stared determinedly out of the windshield, avoiding his gaze as long as she could.

"Not a friend of the opera then," he said - his voice light.

"Not a friend of being Sideshow Bob anywhere," she said, still not looking at him.

He stepped on the brakes hard and she nearly flew through the windshield.

'Should have used the seatbelt,' she thought slightly shocked.

"Hey," she said, finally looking at him. "What is this? Attempted vehicular manslaughter?"

"It will be outright murder if you don't stop bitching…."

His voice was biting and cold now. She had a déjà vu, something about swimming pools; she had been crying... but she was still far too angry to get lost in the half-forgotten memory. She held onto her anger. If she read the signs right Damon would probably make her think that she had a fantastic evening any moment now. Not wanting that moment to come earlier than it should, she silently fumed all the way through the late evening traffic.

They left the car in some street not too far away from their apartment building and Damon handed her his jacket. She took it without thanks and they walked the rest of the way home. She didn't look at him.

Halfway there they were stopped by a young man, hardly any older than Caroline herself, hiding something his jacket pocket.

"Your money, quick," he demanded.

Startled, Caroline let go off the edges of the jacket she had held together earlier, careful not to reveal a hint of her marked body. The jacket fell open and in the dim light of the street lamp her bite marks were clearly visible.

The man was surprised by her accidental flash of skin. There was a look of dawning horror on his face as his eyes went from her body to Damon.

Caroline turned around and there he stood with his true face on. He was on the man's throat in less time than it took her to blink and within mere seconds the man dropped lifeless to pavement.

She stared at Damon, horrified. He turned around to her, looking human save for the blood that was still dripping from his mouth and chin. He looked savage and she could believe that this was the same person she had mouthed off earlier. Wherever had she found the courage?

He sloppily wiped off the blood with the sleeve of his shirt.

Her voice was shaking as she said: "You missed a spot."

She kept her distance but pointed on her own face to the blood he had missed.

He didn't wipe it off instead he stalked toward her. She stood her ground even though he scared her witless now.

"We have to get rid of the body," he said, making no move toward such thing.

"We?" She echoed the word faintly.

He smiled at her, just like always, while the man lay dead on the ground.

"You'll have to be the look-out," he said, his smile showed his bloody teeth. "I'll be quick. You just wait here."

And then he and the body were gone. She stood alone in the dark street, shivering, his jacket still open.

She didn't know how much time passed before he came back. He took her by the arm and they went back to the apartment which with its bright lights and lack of color seemed a lot less creepy and a lot more normal.

Damon had cleaned himself up a bit on the way. If she tried hard enough she could pretend that the whole thing never happened. She was still shivering.

He was observing her.

"You look cold."

She said nothing in response. She just stood in the middle of the living room, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. Everything was just white noise.

"Can't have you getting sick," he said and pulled off her jacket.

He furrowed his brow, cataloging the scars and bites and bruises. And then to Caroline's surprise he bit into his own wrist and pressed it to her mouth. She refused to open her lips for a second until her jaw weakened as if it had its own will and she began to swallow mouthfuls of his blood.

It made her feel warm and giddy. Better than weed, better than booze, a buzz without sluggishness, a high without that icky nasty racing feeling. Her skin prickled and she stopped shivering.

He pulled away his already healing wrist but the feeling didn't go away. Her nerves were like a live wire, all her senses seemed amplified. Damon was a dark splash of color in the sea of white. The image of the young man lying lifelessly on the pavement appeared unbidden next to him.

Involuntarily she touched the base of her neck, as if to confirm the beat of her own pulse, the scars betraying her own survival. But they were gone. Her skin felt smooth and unblemished, as if no one had ever hurt her.

Her fingers trailed to the bite on her breast, it was gone, too. Electric shocks followed in the wake of her fingers.

"You healed me," she said in wonder.

At the same time hunger awoke in the deep pit of her stomach. There was still the spot of blood in the corner of Damon's mouth. It looked delicious, like candy, so she leaned forward and licked it away.

It turned out to taste salty, metallic, and not at all sweet but she figured that it would have to do.

Her tongue trailed from the corner along his bottom lip which felt soft and pliant. His tongue met hers and the taste of salt and metal in her mouth was suddenly diluted by his saliva. A different hunger arose in her, the nerves in her body grew tight, her limbs heavy and light at the same time.

Her hands ran along his shoulders to seek and open the buttons of his shirt. His hands found the fastenings at the back of her gown much quicker; she had barely opened the first three buttons of his shirt before she felt her gown pool around her feet.

Her heart began to beat in a staccato rhythm when his hands began to send their own electric shocks across her the planes of her back and her breasts. She gripped his arms as hard as she could while her tongue battled his and won. He gave up and his mouth followed his hands, kissing her neck, her shoulders, the top of her breasts – her heart beat so fast and heavy, struggling to pump her blood through her body, she felt exhilarated and faint.

Before she could collapse on the ground like boneless ragdoll, he already swept her down to the ground himself.

This time nothing hurt.

* * *

_I know this one is shorter than the first two chapters and the next one will be even shorter (I know this because I've written it already, I just need to get done with some more editing.) but I'll update more often to make up for it._


	4. Chapter 4: Love's Not a Victory March

_Sorry it's later than promised. Salad sauce that gave me food poisoning and the rest of that story is pretty darn nasty._

_Still not mine though.  
_

* * *

Chapter Four

_**Love's not a victory march**_

**

* * *

**

It turned out that someone had photographed her because the next morning a picture of her naked back and shoulder – her head turned away from the camera – appeared all over New York's more and less respectable newspapers.

Damon was gleeful about it, saying it was perfect.

"So what now," she asked as he poured over the newspapers.

"I'll wait," he said. "You go to school and show everyone who doesn't matter that it isn't you in this picture."

"Oh."

Caroline dropped the Poptart she had been holding, her appetite suddenly gone. This was why he had healed her the night before.

"Okay," she said, quickly grabbing her bag and jacket. "I'm going then."

He didn't even reply.

* * *

Damon was still gleeful over the success of whatever diabolical plan included the image of her bruises and bites being spread across the news media when she came back. Her unblemished skin had earned her a lot strange looks and whispers in Columbia's hallways and classrooms but she was used to that by now.

Damon's excitement was more unusual. He was so pleased with himself that he practically brimmed with satisfaction. It tired her out just watching him. She went to the bedroom to escape and have a head start on _Farewell to Arms_ – and promptly fell asleep during the second chapter.

* * *

But Damon's good mood wore off quickly. Impatient for whatever he was waiting for, its continued absence made him cranky. If he wanted something from Caroline he didn't asked for it, he just dragged, pushed and pulled her. If she couldn't keep up, he merely told her to be faster – not a thought of slowing down.

He kept his bites out of plain eyesight now, not that it was really necessary. No one would have been able to guess what animal had been mauling her thighs - they were that savage. He didn't intentionally hurt her, she told herself, his impatience was simply overwhelming him.

The excuse rang true most of the time, except when she got out of bed in the morning and felt every inch of her body where he had held too tight, grabbed too hard, took too fast, and had torn too much. In the cold light of dawn the excuse felt truly pathetic. That Damon wasn't malicious when he hurt her - merely careless - only made it more pathetic.

When someone finally knocked on their door, she was utterly unprepared. She had gotten her purse, not willing to expose the delivery guy to Damon's perpetual grumpiness and had gone alone to open to door.

It turned out that on the other side stood Elena. Except, as she quickly registered, the Elena she had known all her life had been practically married to her straightening iron and yet this version wore her hair in long old-fashioned curls.

"Hi," she said tentatively.

No hint of recognition flickered in the doppelganger's eyes.

"Why don't you let me in," she asked sweetly instead.

Caroline responded by throwing the door into her face.

"Damon," she yelled, freaked out by the thing outside.

"Damon," she said more quietly to his "What?" when he finally made an appearance.

"Who is the stranger outside and why she's wearing Elena's face?"

He had already begun to brush her off – she saw the signs, she had seen them often enough before – but stopped and just stared at her for half a second. It would have been funny if the girl outside hadn't been freaking her out.

"Go away," he said, before heading to the door, not even sparing her a glance.

For once she agreed with him. It did seem wise to move out his and fake Elena's eyesight but to stay within earshot, so she hid in the hallway that led to the bedroom and carefully listened.

The first thing she noticed – with some satisfaction – the stranger wasn't exempt from Damon's bad temper either. With little attempt at small talk or even a greeting he straightforwardly asked her what she wanted. Her answer was completely inaudible to Caroline, which sucked a lot.

Damon lowered his voice as well and only the occasional phrase and word like "revenge" and "council" trickled to her hiding place.

Then she heard the door close. Straining herself to hear a sound and fearing it, she continued to wait. It took a long time and a lot of courage for her find out that they were gone.

* * *

She waited three days for him to come back. It should have been nice to have the apartment and her life to herself: listening to the music she liked, taking as long in the shower as she wanted, watching the crap on TV she wanted to see. But the uncertainty made any attempt at normal life impossible.

She went to class but couldn't concentrate; she tried to catch up on the novels of the old white dead men Damon had gotten her but when she settled down on the couch to read them it was hard to comprehend even a sentence since she always found herself listening for the sound of the door.

The waiting game made her crabby and by the time she found herself snapping at some hapless Starbucks employee she had already gained a whole new perspective on Damon's earlier behavior.

After two days she began to wonder if he would ever come back at all. The thought should have overjoyed her, really, but instead it filled her with dread.

Now Damon was nothing to write home about – not as roommate, sugar daddy, boyfriend, or whatever he was – but he and this apartment was the only home left that she could have written that letter to anyway.

When he finally did come home she felt nothing but relief.

The mere sight of him coming through that door made her happy, a feeling she suppressed immediately. She had to keep herself under control around him – with Damon no show of weakness went unpunished. But at least he hadn't brought the scary Elena clone with him.

Not daring to show him her true feelings, she showed the only neutral emotion she could think of: curiosity.

"Damon," she asked. "What's going on?"

He didn't answer her, instead he started to strip. She didn't ask again, she merely stood her ground, trying to gauge his mood, and kept waiting for an answer. When he threw his shirt to the ground, she got one. Kind of.

"I'm going to take a shower," he said.

And then after giving her calculating smile, he added: "Join me?"

Of course, she did. It hadn't been much a question anyway and it wasn't like _The Sound and the Fury_ could measure up to Damon anyway.

So she began to strip as well, revealing the bruises and bites he had left on her body earlier that week. He actually stared when she had taken off her pants at the bites that had finally begun to scab over. They were still tender and Caroline knew she would feel them for some time to come.

He fell to his knees in front of her and trailed with his fingers the bite on her left upper thigh near the edge of her underwear.

"This one's gonna leave a scar," he said while an emotion Caroline couldn't read briefly flickered across his face.

Before she had even the time to digest that piece of news, he pushed her back into the couch, crouching on top of her. And then, again, was the familiar taste of copper pennies on her tongue.

When he let up, she felt content, happy, high even. Her skin looked like peaches and cream all over. Immaculate, perfect. The shower felt like summer rain and the sex was better than she even remembered.

Only when she came down from her high, she remembered her question from earlier.

"Damon," she asked again. "What's going on?"

The blood exchange and the shower put him into a good mood, so he almost indulged her with an answer.

"Don't worry," he said. "I've got it under control."

He frowned briefly, then picked up something out the pocket of his discarded coat to throw it unceremoniously in her direction. It landed next to her and she bent down to pick it up.

"Here," he said. "I've got you something."

She bit back the "I'd prefer answers", knowing it would only get her a brainwashing by an annoyed Damon, and held it gingerly up into the light. It was an expensive looking necklace, one that matched the earrings he had gotten her.

"It's pretty," she said.

He smiled at her. She marveled at the smile for a bit, it was so unusually open and kind for Damon, it nearly looked foreign on his face.

"Put it on," he said.

There was even a hint of happy excitement when he added: "We're getting pizza. What do you want on yours?"

'I love you,' she thought.

"Anything," she said.

* * *

She discovered the quote by accident. Having gotten bored with _The Sound and the Fury_, she had instead leafed through Faulkner's other stuff and was startled by the mention of the scent of courage and horses. There in that random novel among the many that Damon had given her, she finally found the thing she hadn't even known she had been missing.

_'… she said', _he wrote_, ' __verbena was the only scent you could smell above the smell of horses and courage__ and so it was the only one that was worth the wearing.'_

She didn't know why she forgotten about it, about Faulkner, about the sentence, about this little purple flower. But it must mean something far beyond Faulkner, far beyond even courage itself for Damon to make her forget about it.

On her way home she went to bunch of flower shops, carefully searched for on the University campus computers. Verbena was a hard flower to come by but she finally succeeded finding it in a small shop in Greenwich Village.

On the subway she realized it wouldn't do for her to openly bring the flowers home.

So she threw all but one flower bud away and during the elevator ride home, she hid the one left in the back pocket of her pants. She only hoped that the strength of its scent was a metaphor rather than reality. If it wasn't it would not take long before she would be found out.

But her worries were unfounded. Damon didn't notice anything. Instead he took her out to dinner to a fancy restaurant. It was strange because since he had come back he preferred delivered food and delivery guys - she merely got nibbled on but always as some sort of dessert not the main course.

His puzzling actions became clearer when halfway through the meal he asked the waiter for a telephone.

It was who he was talking to that made a drop her fork and stare and stare and stare some more. Bonnie, Stefan, Elena – all alive and well if Damon's side of the conversation was to be believed. And really… Why hadn't she realized sooner that the memory of their death were so vague, so painless? Why hadn't she realized that they didn't make any sense?

Damon talked to them about magic and spells, in plain earshot of her, confident that he would make her forget again. Startled she realized that if Elena and Bonnie were okay, so might be her mother and father. Matt, annoying Aunt Josie, Tyler, Mrs. Lockwood, everyone she had ever thought died during the Plague could be fine.

"What are you staring at," Damon asked after he ended the call.

"Is my mom okay," she simply asked in response.

He simply glowered at her.

"Eat up," he said, a gleam of expectation entering his eyes.

That was all he gave her as an answer and she realized that he expected her to forget. And suddenly it made sense that the scent of verbena was stronger than even courage itself. Wearing it meant that Damon could not make her forget again. That he could no longer bend her to his will as he pleased.

She wouldn't be able to regain her memories but just as he couldn't permanently change who she truly was, but as long as she kept those flowers close, her mind would be her own.

She picked up her fork again, pretending she had forgotten. And smiled, pretending that he still had that kind of power over her.


	5. Chapter 5: You're just a fading reminder

_This part is from Damon's point of view. Things are not necessarily how he thinks they are, just like they weren't like Caroline thought they were._

* * *

II.

**Sympathy for the devil**

Chapter Five

_**Y**__**ou're just a fading reminder of who I used to be**_

**

* * *

**

For once things went swimmingly. Things usually didn't when Stefan got mixed up in his business. Not that he ever did any of the heavy lifting of "their" plan though. No, Stefan merely waited around looking after the girlfriend, the witch and no wardrobe. He should have left him to his own devices but without him the threesome would have been heading right to Trainwreckville, stop nowhere.

He didn't really care all that much for their noble goal they drafted him into – and just for the record, he liked his place at the top of the food chain just fine. But to not actually rule in Hell but rather have to bow to Katherine fucking Pierce of all the crazy bitches on this godforsaken planet unfortunately made Stefan's stupid plan actually look good.

It was deliciously ironic. Katherine always had had delusions of grandeur but ruling the world through the cleverly executed mass murder of a hundred million people was even out there for someone whose hold on reality and common sense had always been as shaky as hers.

It wasn't that he wasn't impressed by her body count and tenacity - after all she had been planning this for centuries. Even Damon could admire that kind of commitment. After all his own plans usually were executed immediately or he grew bored with them. Long range plans weren't just his forte, he left that to Stefan. His specialty was improvisation – like Caroline.

Originally he had only pumped her for information and a little extra, but she had turned out to be the perfect bait to get Katherine out of hiding and into revealing those little tidbits that would make him end her brief reign of terror. It's hard to rule the world with invisible chains if the peasants get reminded what they should be fighting.

Although… technically… that had been Caroline's improvisation. She could be quick on her feet if she wanted to. Usually she didn't. She was pliant and easy, easily bent but, as he had found out with some delight, pretty hard to break. At least she proved to be a convenient diversion from Stefan's tiresome plan.

Caroline was an amusing distraction except when he compelled her. Then she went quiet and dull. She was funnier when she didn't walk around in a brain-damaged daze but it wouldn't do for her to remember that phone call and start to ask not so funny questions.

He grew quickly and sufficiently bored with watching her pick on her dessert, so he just grabbed her hand and pulled her out of her seat mid-bite.

"We're leaving," he told her.

"Shouldn't we be paying," she asked, some brain cells obviously still working.

"No," he replied.

He didn't pay for food and take-out on principle. He didn't need to eat, so why should he pay for it? He only made an exception for alcohol. If his experiences during the Prohibition had shown him anything it was that the small change is never worth the bullet holes, stupid questions, or the cost of a new suit.

He strode out of restaurant, confident that Caroline would follow. She always did – like a faithful dog – and even more so when he had just compelled her.

She was also exceedingly lackluster in that state. He liked her better with some attitude and awareness what he was doing to her.

When they came back to their version of home sweet of home – Caroline sucked as homemaker, once every week she threw away their old take out and pizza boxes and called it cleaning, so there was little homey-ness about it – she hadn't gotten any more entertaining. He probably whammied her too hard – nothing new here, it had happened before, it would happen again.

He still snapped his fingers in front of her eyes, just to see.

"Anyone in here," he asked.

She stared at him as she had never seen him before – not promising – before she lamely claimed that she was just tired.

She looked fine to him but he was _so done _with the whole situation, so he just rolled his eyes and dismissed her. He had better things to do like saving the world using the dumb ass plan his brother had come up with. This part of it involved airplane tickets and a freshly stolen credit card. It was dull but not as dull as Caroline's tired excuses.

* * *

He hated flying commercial. The neatly packaged airplane food was crap and even the blood got stale at 30,000 feet above the ground. Cranky as he was he called Stefan from Singapore's only international airport - but only to complain at length, annoying him for as long as he could before Stefan hung up on him.

It was all Brother Dearest's fault anyway that Damon was stuck with the manual labor part of this plan. Just a little human blood and Stefan would have been fit enough for Damon to take a long-earned vacation somewhere. And surely Elena and Bonnie would have offered themselves for the good cause. And they might have even enjoyed it like Caroline did most of the times.

The phone call was consequently brief and short on niceties but still a hell more polite than it would have been twenty hours later when Damon was up to the eyeballs covered in Malaysian rainforest mud.

And from there on it still took four days, sixteen hours and thirty-four minutes to seek and destroy according to the fucking plan. There was little satisfaction doing this, knowing that there were four other shittily hidden mass-killing artifacts out there triangulated to guarantee Katherine's brave new world.

There was nothing to gain from the experience but a deeper appreciation for _Apocalypse Now_. But at least the mosquitoes had left him alone. They probably recognized him as kindred. Or maybe they just weren't fans of the Mountain Man look either.

He felt like he should have the flown the "Mission Accomplished" banner just to spite the bitch but there was little satisfaction in that if she couldn't even know what he had done. To make up for the lack of festivities he made an extended stop in a local village. Not even trying to the "tourist off the trail" ruse, people suspected that something was off about him right away.

First they thought he was a ghost, an evil spirit trying to get back at them for an evil committed by them which they couldn't recall. He could have compelled them but decided to not expend the energy. They reluctantly sold him a can of coke and some food stuff which looked bizarre but still tasted than half of the take-out he had eaten in the last months.

Unfortunately the local men didn't make for quite as easy snacks as New York's delivery guys and the women were far from being as willing and pliant blood dolls as Caroline was. Things went south fairly quickly, so he compelled as many villagers as he could, made them bury the bodies to remain inconspicuous and got the hell out of the dodge.

He called Stefan from Singapore again. This time it was from what appeared to be the city's only karaoke bar that allowed smoking. The environment made the otherwise squeaky-clean Singaporeans careless and so they were easy pickings after the Malaysian disaster.

The painful background noise of a bunch of middle-aged sad businessmen singing "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" was an intentional bonus – which Stefan didn't care for. Unfortunately the phone call took an awkward detour when Elena took the phone from Stefan and asked him straight away if he knew where Caroline had disappeared to.

"Why," he asked, deciding to tell her with the truth. "She looked fine the last time I saw her."

"Really," Elena's voice sound tinny. "Do you know where she is then?"

He paused as if he had to think about this. On stage the Sad Businessmen Choir had switched to "Keep on Rocking in the Free World." It was too cruel for words and he had more than a century of experience when it came to torture.

"No," he said with conviction.

Class, home, possibly shopping, she could be practically everywhere within a five-mile radius of their apartment right now.

"I don't."

He hung up.

* * *

Damon went to St. Petersburg next. There was less mud this time, more cats though. He wondered why Katherine had been thinking that the lax security and the smell of cat pee in the Hermitage basement vaults would be able to keep anyone away.

The job was dull just like the rest of this part of Stefan's plan had been so far, aside from the cats and the small Rubens he found. He briefly thought of bringing it back to Caroline but dismissed the idea. She would probably consider it a comment on her weight and pout. Instead he took a little painting of a pastoral scene he remembered seeing in the bedroom of a Russian princess a long time ago. She had been pretty, passionate and trilingual but dumb as a pet rock. Can't win them all.

He called Stefan from the closest payphone for the next destination. Except that Stefan didn't even knew that one yet.

"Why?" He nearly crushed the receiver. "Is the witch's radar broken? I've risked my life to get you all the info from Katherine. So what have you been doing? Did you all just go to Disneyland while I did all the work?"

"Actually Elena and Bonnie have spend a lot of time trying to find Caroline. Disneyland was just on the way."

There was no fooling Stefan. Damon might have duped Elena earlier but Stefan did probably accurately guess what he hadn't said and then didn't do anything about it. Damon briefly considered beating his head into the wall of phone booth in Stefan's physical absence but then just called him a fucking cocksucker and pretty much every curse word that avoided a mention of their mother.

"Caroline's fine," he finally said. "Why does no one believe me?"

"I don't know," Stefan said.

There was some bitter humor in his voice: "Must be part of your personal charm."

"Oh fuck you, too. Give me Elena."

"She isn't here right now but I can take a message."

"So who else is breathing in that cell of yours?"

He briefly thought about this.

"Wait… Are you watching porn?"

There was a brief scuffle on the other side and then Elena said: "Where's Caroline?"

"New York City," he said with little ceremony.

"Why?"

"Because if you can make it anywhere…," he started and stopped. "Come on, it's New York and Caroline's a bright young thing. Where's your imagination?"

"So if it's all fun and games, why isn't she answering her phone?"

"Uhm… yeah."

He cocked his head and wondered if he could get out of the line of questioning with some flimsy excuse.

"Oh, look at the time…"

Elena outright snapped at him: "Damon!"

"She lost her cell," he said.

"I lost her cell," he added after a little hesitation.

"Cell phones can be replaced."

Elena went into full Secret Service interrogation mode. There was definitely a future in law enforcement for her. She would look good in uniform. Hmm, kinky. He shook off the thought of her in a tight police officer's uniform from his head.

"Well…" This was actually kind of embarrassing. "She thinks you're dead."

"What?"

The echo came from the witch but the decibel levels from Elena were impressive all on their own.

"Katherine saw her," and then decided on the spot that honesty was never the best policy.

"She would crack like egg in two seconds flat. Now get me those coordinates."

"You're an asshole." Bonnie said and then someone hung up on him.

* * *

Back in New York the painting was a great success. Caroline loved it. _Loved it._ It made for a delighting homecoming.

What was a lot less delighting was that he ran across Katherine the second he went out again. He briefly entertained the charming mental image of her circling the block for days but then realized the reality must have featured some poor underling doing the job.

It was strange to see Katherine in this time and place. Despite the modern clothes she didn't look like she belonged here. She still wore her hair in her old-fashioned ringlets, like she was still waiting to pose for Dante Gabriel Rossetti any moment now. Maybe someone had turned the guy and no one had told him. Katherine seemed like the person who could make it happen.

She smiled at him, her old seductive smile, believing they were going to party like it was 1864.

"So you're still drinking from that pathetic girl."

Ignoring any idea of personal boundaries, she began to play with the lapel of his jacket.

He forced his eyes to smile along with his mouth. Tyra would be proud.

"A sip of revenge a day…"

"Really?" She dropped her hands.

"How long are you going to nurse on your childhood trauma," she asked, not even bothering to mask her contempt.

Startled, he realized that Katherine didn't like sharing, not even with harmless, little blood donors. Not even with she shared something she didn't even care about. The world revolved around her, she had made it that way.

"Until I have enough," he said evenly.

He would have to take Caroline with him on the next trip. It would make the whole thing a lot less low-key but apparently she wasn't safe in New York anymore. Elena would have his head on a platter or at least pout a lot if anything happened to her dear friend. At least Blondie was pretty good as far as convenience snacks went.

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself."

Her smile was so tight, it was practically non-existent.

"You were gone," she continued, a hint of a threat in her voice.

"Couldn't tell Stefan about our little tryst on the phone, could I?"

She smiled; flattered that she could still cause problems between the Salvatore Brothers. She was still as vain and predictable as she had always been. He was glad that at least some things never changed.

"I think he misses you," he continued. "He's still dating Elena."

Her smile dropped: "How is she? I thought she died."

"No," he said. "She's fine."

Seeing her less than pleased face he opted for more flattery.

"But not as fine as you."

He cocked his head suggestively.

"So Stefan misses me…" She bit her lips and smiled, flashing her pearly whites at him. "And you…"

She put her hand on his shoulder, her lips closing in on his.

He could feel her breath on his face as she said: "You should tell him more about us. He shouldn't miss out."

Her smile widened: "But I guess you would need something to tell him about."

She turned around and strode away, obviously expecting to follow him like a dog following a bitch in the heat.

And he did. It wasn't like that he didn't want to. It wasn't that he wasn't in love with her – he always would be in love with her.

Even when he hated her, even when he was sabotaging her great empire, he could stop loving her as little as he could stop breathing.

But he didn't like that sharing her bed had become an offer he couldn't refuse. He wanted the choice more than he could ever want her.

Actually he wanted a fucking shower more than he wanted her during the whole thing.

* * *

He came back to Caroline and their apartment few days later. It was night, she was asleep. He crawled next to her in bed, inhaling the scent of her shampoo that permeated the air. On the wall opposite the bed she had put up the painting, a spot of color and brightness in the surgery toolbox that was the apartment's interior design failure. He should find the guy responsible and eat him.

He hugged Caroline's warm, soft body towards his own. Unconsciously, she molded herself against him.

And that was how he found her when he woke up. The sun shone through the windows and gave Caroline's bed head a golden shine. It was six in the morning, the perfect time. He woke her up.

"I need your cell phone."

"What," she mumbled, still dreaming.

He shook her awake again.

"Your cell phone."

"Lost it." She said and pulled the covers over her head.

He pulled them away.

"I mean your new one."

She blinked at him.

"How do you…?"

He didn't let her finish, time was the essence here.

"Lucky guess. Come on now, hurry up."

She got up and went to the living room. When she came back she threw the cell phone at his head and crawled back into bed and fell asleep again in nearly no time at all.

He called Stefan and didn't waste any time with pleasantries: "I want the coordinates and I want them now."

His brother was awake but very annoyed.

"It's five o'clock. Couldn't you have waited a few hours?"

"No."

"What? No small talk? No insults? Are you sick?" Stefan sounded nearly concerned.

It was fucking annoying but it was quicker to give in.

"How's the girlfriend? Still pining for better things… like me?"

"She's asleep," Stefan said, sounding incredibly tired about something. "How's Caroline."

He threw a quick glance at her.

"Asleep, still blissfully clueless."

Which reminded him…

"And so is Katherine."

He grimaced, thinking of the night before.

"She sends her regards."

Silence greeted him from the other end. And Stefan hadn't even heard the bad news yet.

"She asked after Elena's…," he left a meaningful pause. "…health."

Stefan audibly swallowed then said: "Did she ask after Bonnie?"

Damon's smiled, because at least one thing was going according to plan.

"No, she's got no idea."

Stefan didn't say anything for a moment.

But he sounded actually kind of happy when he finally asked him a question Damon hadn't expected at all: "How do you feel about penguins?"


	6. Chapter 6: Stuck in the middle with you

_Thank you, **rock'n'rollbitch, WaffleMuncher, Faith-Catherine, Angelusfaith, starespace, g1rlanachr0n1sm , StillBreathin, UglyTruth**, and **DarkAngel35**. Your support keeps me going. :)_

_Still not mine._

* * *

Chapter Six

_**Stuck in the middle with you**_

* * *

Girls carried too much stuff around.

"What do you need this one for?"

She snatched the bottle he had picked up out of his hands.

"It's for my hair. And I need it."

"You don't need to pack everything. We'll come back."

She gave him a doubtful look.

"If we survive," he added - certain that he would hit a nerve.

She gave him a sour smile.

"I love the ways you always reassure me."

He watched her packing up the entire contents of their bathroom for another five seconds then said: "That's it. You'll carry your own bags."

She didn't even dignify him with an answer. She was right. He would have never carried her bags anyway.

They spent thirty-six hours on trains and planes, changing them and their identities quite a few times before making it finally to New Zealand where they boarded a cruise ship.

Unfortunately the tourist route was the closest Damon could get to the coordinates without pretending to be a scientist caring about Antarctic desert regions for far too long. To add insult to injury the size of the vessel and resulting physical proximity of passengers and crews made feeding difficult. As a result Caroline quickly looked sickly and anemic. It didn't matter how much care he took while feeding from her, she could barely must up the energy to get up in the morning.

With Caroline pretty much out of commission he had to create his own entertainment which was difficult considering the paucity of sights – the stops, annoying and unavoidable, brought the ship to places with exciting names and very little else.

The Snares (birds on a barren island) Auckland Islands (birds, bogs and he cheated some old ladies during a bridge game), Macquarie Island (penguins) Cape Adare (more penguins, ice, a hut and the whiskey he kept after drinking the kitchen staff under the table), Cape Hallett (penguins, ice, seals and the dark and lonely moment of his life when he partook in the on-board Bingo game), Terra Nova Bay (same old, despite the name), Franklin Island (those penguins bastards again – how he wished for a gun), and finally the Ross Ice Shelf (just what it said on the tin) and his cue to leave.

He took one last kiss from Caroline and bent down to drink her into unconsciousness. There was an expression of defiance in her eyes. It was familiar - as was the fear that gave her cheeks a pale pink hue.

He had thought the ship was dull as dishwater but Antarctica itself took the concept of boredom to a whole new level. Endless ice was followed by a barren, dry and cold desert mountain range with the occasional snowy peak. He remained unimpressed by the gigantic glaciers, their rumbling and the wind as the only noise in the silence, and the otherworldliness of the landscape. It might have looked like a different world but underneath the showy exterior it was the same rotten planet. When he finally made it to the lake the water was of a clear and luminescent blue, broken only by shards of ice. The inviting swimming pool color was treacherous though, only its high salt content kept it from freezing altogether.

He cursed Stefan, Katherine and the damn plan to hell one more time and then dove in.

When he came back, he drunk the ship's cook dry, and threw him over board. He had a well-known thing for cooking sherry and his filet mignon was ghastly anyway, so no one would be surprised or even care. He borrowed one of the other passengers' cell phone and called Stefan.

"I hate you," he said and hung up.

Then he threw the cell over board, wishing he had never said it before, so he could have given him a true appreciation of the feeling he had saved up for him while trekking through and diving _in_ fucking Antarctica.

He found Caroline reading in their cabin, looking much better than she had when he had left her. But then her being conscious was already a giant leap forward.

As a way of greeting he snatched the book out of her hands.

She was surprised but once she got over her initial shock, she didn't say anything at all. Instead she tried to take the book back. But neither her strength nor her reach was equal to his.

After a brief struggle she gave up and gave him her best school teacher impression.

"You're not a third grader, Damon. Give me the book."

He looked at the title - _Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling and Kierkegaard_ – opened it and tried his best to look interested in its subject matter.

"Maybe I want to know…"

He gave the table of contents a cursory look.

"…all about Kant's take on autonomy and moral evil."

She looked deeply unimpressed.

"I'll braid my hair and you can pull my pigtails instead if you really want to play this game. Just give me my book back first."

He threw the book into her lap.

"I don't get why you're bothering with this crap anyway. You're on a holiday. Relax."

She gave him a disbelieving look and said: "It's for school."

Her voice grew rough: "It's not like I can make a career out of being professional a vampire groupie."

"You're not a vampire groupie."

"Oh really?"

Her eyebrows were raised; she appeared to be annoyed for some unknown reason.

"You're saving the world."

A look of expectation appeared on her face; clearly she wanted to know more about that. Too bad, so sad.

"And a real vampire groupie would recoil from those pastels of yours and go for all black."

She looked annoyed for a brief moment. He smiled at her.

"You know, they would have kicked you out of the union for that alone years ago."

She let out a short laugh at that, put the Kant away, and began to braid her hair.

"What are you doing?"

"I promised you I would let you pull my pigtails. Remember?"

"Mrs. Robinson, are you're trying to seduce me?"

"Is it working?"

He gave her long look; her arms were raised invitingly behind her head, thrusting her chest forward, hands in her tousled blonde hair. She was pretty as a picture and looked twice as appetizing.

"Not really," he said.

His smile showed his teeth.

"But you could keep trying."

In Fiji he compelled a rather over-dimensional sailboat away from its owner. It was just small enough for Damon to be able to sail it on his own but more than large enough to comfortably house eight people. He figured that was large enough for the two of them and his bagged blood. After all he couldn't live off Caroline for the entire journey, not with her looking like death warmed over already, not without killing her. And he certainly couldn't live off fucking fish.

Caroline wasn't impressed with the sailing part of the yacht.

"A sailboat? Why don't you get something with a decent engine?"

"And run out of fuel? Wind, Caroline," he put as much patronizing as he could into this lecture. "It's the only fuel that never runs out."

He was not wrong. They made it off Fiji just fine. Caroline was just healthy enough to get seasick this time around and spent the first forty miles on open sea vomiting. The next ten she merely looked green in the face. Then the fuel that never runs out… ran out. The little actual fuel the engine still had, followed suit quickly.

When the engine finally stuttered and stopped, Caroline, having suitably recovered, looked at him. Then she looked out to sea, then at him again. She opened her mouth, presumably to speak.

"Don't say it," he said.

She started again.

"Don't," he repeated, all humor gone from his voice.

She rolled her eyes, threw a "Whatever" in his direction and then disappeared under deck.

She reappeared, clad in tiny, tiny shorts, a bikini top and a book in her hand. She ignored him. Instead she sat herself on a chair on the deck and started to read, ripe for some mocking.

"Still working on this career of yours," he called out.

"Not everyone has your talent for sponging off other people," was the wry answer.

She didn't even look up.

"I'm saving the world here," he said, just a little bit pissed off by the implication that he was on this trip for shit and giggles.

"I thought _I_ was saving the world."

At least she paid him proper attention now.

"You are. Along with me."

She put the book away and looked him directly in the eyes.

"So what is my role in that great and incomprehensible world-saving scheme of yours?"

Her attitude was clearly tuned to bitch today.

"You know I can't tell you," he lied. There was really no point in telling her that she was simply a pawn who simply had managed to outlive her usefulness.

"Why?"

He gave her long once-over. She looked radiant in the sunlight even though her future looked as bleak as his own. But he could do without that reminder right now.

"Because you would tell her everything before she could even say 'spill', stupid."

She didn't give up.

"Her? You mean that scary Elena clone?"

"Katherine?"

"Is that her name?"

She frowned: "What were you doing with her anyway? You were away for days."

He grinned at her new line of questioning.

"Jealous?"

She _sneered _in his face at that.

"No."

His grin grew wider: "Liar."

"Hardly."

"Really?"

"Seriously."

"Methinks, the lady doth protest too much."

She picked her book up again. (Maybe he should have avoided the Shakespeare.)

"That's your problem."

He pulled the book away from her face.

"On my boat I get the last word."

She put it up again.

"Not if I can help it."

He tried to pull the book away again but she put up a decent fight this time.

"No cheating," she said.

"I would never," he tried to mimic a certain degree of sincerity. He was sure he had failed.

"Sure you would."

He had, at least with her.

"Don't you trust me?"

He was honestly curious now.

"As far as I can throw you," she said.

_Her_ earnestness at least sounded genuine. She was either a better liar than he gave her credit for or she actually meant it. He pouted for moment but then her comment gave him an idea.

He took her cue, picked her up – she let her book drop – and threw her over board.

"I don't cheat," he called as she splashed into the open sea. "I win."

She struggled to get her head above the water and then some more to keep it there.

"I can't swim," she wheezed more than anything.

He pretended to give the matter some thought for a second or two, then sighed dramatically, chucked away his shoes and jumped after her.

Once he was in the water, her struggles ceased and were replaced by the fluid movements of an experienced swimmer.

"So this is your way of trying to get the last word," he said.

The water was warm and comfortable. Compared to his last swim, it was heaven. He swam lazily toward her.

"Falsehoods and trickery? And you accuse me of cheating?"

He put his hands on her shoulders. They were warm, even more than the sea.

"Do you know what they did with people like you back in the day?"

He pushed her down, down under water.

She resisted little at first but soon began to struggle wholeheartedly. Her foot kicked him in the chest (He should have remembered about her golden cheerleader days and those high kicks.) and he let her go. She still kicked and threw her hands around as she got up. Her right hand caught his cheek right away and left four bloody paths that immediately healed.

More out of instinct than out of intent he pushed her away from him – directly into the boat's starboard side. She hit it with force and was knocked out immediately. Blood gushed from a head wound and then she began to drown.

As he picked her up and fed her his blood, he figured that he would have to stop playing rough with her. She was drinking more of his blood than he was drinking hers these days. That was just incredibly fucking pointless and annoying.

"What happened," Caroline asked as she regained consciousness.

"You went for a swim and hit your head," he told her.

No need to bother with the details.

"Oh." She had tried to get up but then sat down again.

Her wet clothes made a squeaking sound.

"Damon," she asked. "Why did I go for a swim in my clothes?"

He made an impatient noise. "It's a long story."

She looked at him with big eyes.

"You know," he said as he got up. "I'm sick of your bullshit kiddie games."

She looked stricken for a moment. Then she began to peel herself out of her wet clothes. There was not a lot to peel and once she was done, this kiddie game had become R-rated at least. She looked to the sky, toward the sun. Then she looked him, a smile on her face.

It looked like forgiveness.

Even he couldn't say no to that.

Later she watched the dolphins. One came really close to the boat, ignoring the danger coming from him, the non-existent wind and ever decreasing stash of blood.

"Aren't dolphins supposed to be smart," he asked no one in particular. It didn't look too appetizing though. On the other hand, Caroline needed to eat, too.

"I guess Darwin will sort it out," he said to no one in particular, especially not to the girl who had ignored his first comment. No dolphin steak for her then.

"So Darwin's your god now," came the bored question from Caroline, who was still watching the dolphins. It was fucking annoying.

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"As long as you don't recruit me as another follower…"

"You forgot to add – not that there's anything wrong with that."

"No, I don't think so."

She finally looked at him. It was encouraging.

"Have you always been this much of a bitch?"

She sat up straighter.

"For some reason, my memory isn't all that reliable."

She let out a small, insincere laugh.

"I mean I used to remember you as the scrummy boyfriend in high school who liked to put me down a lot."

"That's more or less correct."

"You mean less."

He dismissed the argument with a hand wave.

"Details…"

"That's what you call it? Details?"

She turned away.

"That's my life, you asshole."

"So?"

She shook her head.

"I give up."

"Already?"

She didn't reply, instead she headed under deck.

"Where are you going?"

"The bar," she said. "Sobriety will make the rest of this day unbearable."

The wind didn't come back the next day either. Caroline looked worried out to the sea.

"When will it come back," she asked anxiously.

"Why do you care?"

He had supernatural powers but the weather was usually beyond them. Be it controlling or predicting it. He should have taken the witch on this trip. Or simply more gas.

"Do you need to be somewhere," he asked.

"Aside from school," she lectured him. "…and I expect to blinker–"

"Compel," he interrupted her. "The word is 'compel'."

She ignored him: "…my professors about this trip – being stuck at sea with a blood-thirsty vampire…"

She gave him a long look from the side. He vamped out; apparently she wanted an illustration of her argument.

"It sounds like the plot of a pretty dumb horror movie."

"Dumb," he asked, trying to figure out the finer aspects of whatever bizarre point she was trying to make in the first place.

"I hope," she said.

Her eyes narrowed.

"A clever movie would want to defy expectations and kill my character off."

She seemed to have spent some considerable thought on this. Not that he could blame her. Aside from him, there wasn't much better to do.

"And if it's not?"

He was actually curious now.

She smiled – happily. It was kind of disturbing.

"You get killed by the sun."

"And how you'll manage that?" His tone had sharp edge to it now.

She looked away, out to the sea and didn't answer.

"I'm stronger, older and smarter than you," he said.

She shrugged. "I would have to surprise you."

"I'm still smarter than you."

"Oh," she said. "How did we get stuck here then?"

"Do you know how to get this boat moving," he asked his voice slightly acidic.

"No."

"Then shut up."

She didn't look the slightest bit intimidated.

Instead she said: "I would have never stolen a sailboat in the first place."

Which was the point the whole repartee stopped being cute. He briefly weighed the pro and cons of having to feed her his blood again, and then decided against. Not worth the bother.

"I've told you before that I don't want to hear it."

"Just saying."

She didn't look the tiniest bit apologetic, only defensive.

He vamped out again.

"Do you want this to become a clever short film? I can make it an Oscar winner."

She didn't reply. Her face remained the same, no emotion betrayed it. No fear, no pain, no hurt. And for the first time he noticed that her face didn't crumble anymore when he caused her pain.

He kind of missed it.

She continued her silence for an hour, then another hour and another hour. Around hour number four of her self-imposed silence he grew more than a little annoyed.

He hated her stupid voice and the stupid things she said and he could have spent the rest of the eternity happily, never hearing either again but this was just irritating.

He downed a few bourbons and glowered at her. She ignored him and continued to read her book.

But the boredom on the ship gave him more than enough time to see through her pretense. Her eye movements were far too irregular for reading and the way her hand shook when she turned the pages were dead giveaways. And there was the smell. Covered by deodorant, sweat, and sunscreen there was fear.

He wondered how often she had only pretended to be lost in her books before and was faced with the disconcerting thought that somewhere between her little college dorm room and this boat trip she had become a decent liar. And he hadn't even noticed when it happened.

The wind still hadn't come back, the boat was still stuck and Caroline's fear and defiant silence was only of limited entertainment value. Things had to change around here. He downed another glass and then picked the book out of her hands.

"You stink like fear," he said. And defiance – but he didn't say this.

"And?"

There was even more defiance in her eyes.

"I think..."

He brought his face close to hers; her eyes were seeking something on his face, her hands grasped at the air, twitchy and nervous.

He smiled, maybe he couldn't get her face to crumble anymore but she was still an amateur when it came to stoicism. She should take lessons from Stefan. He had seen statues with less stony façades than his. On the other hand… nah.

"It's delicious."

He breathed in the smell of her neck, then licked it. His hands tightened around her wrists and pinned them down. They briefly resisted before they went still.

His tongue followed the smell down into the valley between her breasts and remained there for a few delicious moments. She moaned.

He moved up to her neck again and bit down. The last remains of her resistance ceased as he greedily swallowed her blood, ripe with adrenaline and arousal.

He let up. She took a deep breath. There was a hint of relief in her eyes. He pulled her up but once she was up she nearly keeled over, so he picked her up and got her to bed. No need to heal her, she would be fine with just a little sleep.

That night the wind came back and the mood onboard was much approved from there on. He got to use his considerable if somewhat newly acquired sailing and navigational skills. Not that he was one to brag. It didn't take him too long to reach Stefan's coordinates. The deep sea diving part of the plan, however, turned into a game of looking for a needle in the haystack. At least he didn't need to breathe.

The trip back was uneventful. Caroline still pretty much ignored him in favor for sunbathing and reading – some real, some fake – but he could do very well without her nattering as long as she paid him attention when he wanted her to.

And at least this way he had ample time to think about the last set of coordinates and about what would happen afterwards.

There was little point in returning to New York first, perhaps even less than pretending that they would ever make it back at all.

By the time they reached Fiji and boarded the plane to L.A. he had a pretty decent plan. It involved alcohol and someone else doing his dirty work. He could have think of no better way better to die.


	7. Chapter 7: A Wound, Disembodied

_The quote in the title is by Chris Marker, from his movie 'Sans Soleil'._

_

* * *

_

Chapter Seven

_**Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that t**__**ime heals everything - except wounds. With time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound, disembodied.**_

_**

* * *

**_

He got them a nice hotel suite. He knew that the good ones usually came with a fully stocked bar, which was necessary since he wanted to put the fun in funeral there. He got drunk fairly quickly.

Caroline watched this from a distance for a while but there was no guessing what was going through her mind.

After most of the bottle was gone, she asked: "What's the next step?"

He briefly wondered if he should tell her but then realized that right now she was the smallest security risk anyway.

"We do what everyone's doing these days – we outsource."

"Isn't that kind of…" She obviously searched for the right word for a second. "…too obvious?"

He snorted at this.

"At this point any secrecy is a wasted effort anyway."

She took it in a stride for a moment then looked stricken.

"Is this why we won't make it back to New York?"

He gave her a bitter smile.

"And all your great career plans will be for naught?"

She blinked and swallowed.

"Does it bother you," he asked.

"No," she said - but her voice trembling.

Just when he wanted to call her on her lie, she added: "I don't want to die – not like this. But… you know… if it's… if it's for…"

She bit her lip, her eyes full of uncertainty. It was gone from her face in an instance, like it was never there in the first place, replaced by a perky if shaky smile.

"There are people you can hire for this kind of thing?"

It was pathetic as far as a subtle change of subjects went but he let it slide.

"Not for this 'kind of thing'," he actually made air quotes around the expression. "Just for the tedious bits like dealing with security and safes."

"And you know these people?"

He smiled. "I've already called them from the airport."

She looked at him - full of doubt. It was kind of insulting.

"So basically we just wait now," she asked.

He walked over to the bar and pulled out a bottle of French cognac and poured her a glass.

"Here."

She took the glass without a word of thanks.

"You're welcome," he said.

She merely stared at the glass but didn't drink. Instead her left index finger ran around the rim of the glass; she looked lost in thought.

"You're supposed to drink it," he said after he watched this spectacle for a while.

Wordlessly she raised the glass to her lips and took a small sip. Then she broke her silence.

"How long?"

He knew that she wasn't asking about the length of his little booze bash here. Although for all he cared, she might as well have.

"How long… what?"

"Do we have to wait?"

"Not long."

She took another sip. More of a mouthful this time around.

"How long will it take her to notice," she asked.

He busied himself looking for another bottle of bourbon, failing that he took a bottle of scotch. Then he fiddled with the remote, looking for some music that wasn't a fucking requiem.

The first thing that came on that infernal machine was the words:"_Stay… ahhh, just a little bit longer_."

Kismet. Nothing you could do about that. He left it on.

"Not long," he said again.

At that she downed the rest of her glass all at once. She pulled a face at the taste, then took the bottle out his hand and poured herself another glass.

She raised the glass: "To everything we're about to lose."

At that he drank.

"Spoken like a true poet," he said while he put the bottle down and took the glass out of her hand. He held onto her hand, put one arm around her waist and began to twist and turn her around to the sweet sound of Maurice and his Amazing Zodiacs or whatever that band had been called. He probably owned that record once upon a time, fifty gazillion years ago.

She sang along – she had a surprisingly good voice.

"_Won't you press your sweet lips to mine? Won't you say_–"

She didn't have to ask twice.

* * *

At least the couches of the suite were cozy: creature comforts for those last days. He looked at Caroline, naked but still she appeared to be pretty immaculate. Her hair gave the impression of being artfully tousled; the lips red as if she was wearing still lipstick, a blush on pale cheeks.

"I could turn you," he said without thinking.

She said nothing for a moment. Only a small frown appeared on her face.

He was beginning to doubt if she even understood what he had offered.

"Would I survive if you did," she finally asked.

"Probably not," he said.

"Then what would be the point?"

He shrugged. He hadn't thought this through at all.

"Strength in numbers," he said.

Her frown got deeper.

"What about your brother then? Couldn't he help us?"

"Maybe," he said, keeping his voice non-committal.

He would probably have to stake Stefan if he didn't want his help, because the little shit would come whether he was invited or not. Katherine would finally get to finish them off, one-hundred fifty years too late for either of them, and all this just because Stefan had a Good Samaritan complex.

Caroline took another deep swallow of her glass of rum and coke; she had switched from straight liquor to mixed sweet crap a while ago. Perhaps it was better for her. Humans could die of alcohol poisoning after all. He didn't even have hangovers.

"So we wait here to die," she asked, her voice slightly slurry. "Couldn't we make a run for it?"

He shook his head. If Katherine could find them here, she would find them anywhere.

"You think this is a good place to die?"

She sounded kind of pissed.

"There's no good place to die," he said. "But at least this one comes with complimentary butler service."

He raised his glass: "To complimentary butler service."

She drank. He drank. The music switched to a cover of "I Will Survive", causing a good five minutes of awkward silence and more drinking.

"Why," she asked into the silence between songs.

He pretended that he hadn't heard her. It was easier than pretending that he didn't know what she was asking. A new song began – someone was playing a wicked game with some crooning asshole who probably deserved it.

She didn't ask again and he didn't have to come up with an answer. He didn't have one. Not even a plausible lie. 'Stefan asked me to' would never do. Not when he himself didn't even believe it.

* * *

Destroying the last bit of Katherine's little insurance policy turned out to be so anti-climactic that it was not just an insult to climaxes but even to prefixes. The earth was not shaking (and they were in California), there was no thunder, no lightning, nothing. Zilch, zero, nada. Even Caroline looked thoroughly unimpressed.

"This is it?" She sounded as incredulous as he felt that Katherine's reign of terror didn't seem to end with a bang but rather a whimper.

Her phone rang.

He picked up.

"Don't come here," he simply said before hanging up on his little brother.

It was probably pointless but worth a try.

* * *

They had met Caroline first. He had been out on the look-out for some food – one girl could take only so much bloodletting and he was beginning to feel as tired and anemic as she must be by now – and he when came back the four of them sat around in his hotel suite, looking all cozy and shit. Only briefly he managed to suppress the urge to bury his fist in Stefan's face, if not for making him go diving in fucking Antarctica, or coming here when he told him not to, then simply on principle.

When the bastard smiled like everything was peachy keen and asked him how he was, he lost all what was left of his self-control and his first hit his jaw with his nice bone-crushing sound.

"Never," he said Stefan had some problems getting his jaw back in order. "…ask me for a favor again."

Elena's mouth had fallen open and Caroline and the witch wore matching expressions of surprise.

It was tiresome and he was just way too fucking sober again for this little get-together. He went to the bar and looked for something to drink but found only a large amount of bottled water. For some reason the amount their water supply had miraculously multiplied these past few days. But booze was in short supply. In fact, not a single bottle of alcohol could be found. Not even a beer.

"Where's the bourbon," he asked while opening one drawer after another and slamming them shut.

No one answered him. Caroline pointedly examined her fingernails, which meant he could probably bet good money on "down the drain for one reason or another."

Then she got up, spine straight, cleared her throat and asked: "Do you have any sort of plan to get us out of this?"

He raised his eyebrows at. She looked defiantly back at him.

It was Stefan who finally answered.

"We'll have to fight her. She won't leave us much of a choice."

"And why do I have to stick around for this? What does any of this actually have to do with me?"

There was a small hysterical note in Caroline's voice. But aside from that there was little need to soften the blow.

"It never had anything to do with you in the first place," he simply told her.

"So why am I here then? Why drag me into this?"

Her voice racked up on hysteria. She looked upset, there even seemed to be a hint of tears in her eyes. Everyone else looked vaguely uncomfortable. He, however, wasn't fazed.

"I was bored," he said, putting as much indifference as he could into his voice. And it was true after all. He had been bored and she had been fun most of the time.

She blinked, taking in his words, and then straightened her shoulders further. Wordlessly she walked to the bar, towards him, and out of a drawer pulled a bottle of whiskey. She opened it and handed him a glass.

He raised the glass and looked into her eyes. They were hard shards of blue glass. As he raised the glass to his lips, he noticed that while she wore the earring he had given her, she didn't wear the necklace. Instead she wore something that looked like her old necklace. Just as he wondered if Elena simply had given her a second one or if it was the original the whiskey burned first against his lips and then literally burned through his tongue like acid.

He hastily spit out what he had drunk already and looked at her in shock. She had put the bottle on the counter but her hand still held on to it. Her whole posture was full of defiance.

"How long have you known," he choked out when his tongue finally finished healing.

"For a while."

The reply was curt but behind it he could feel the rage.

"Who told you?"

Her face twisted with passion and anger. He was familiar with the former, not so much with the vehemence of the latter.

"How dumb do you think I am? _Who_ do you think I am?"

She shouted it into his face, letting out all the rage she apparently had saved up for this moment.

"I'm Caroline fucking Forbes, my family has been killing vampires for one-hundred fifty years. Who the hell do you think you are?"

She snatched the bottle off the counter with a speed and fury he would have never imagined her having and left the room, shoulders still ramrod stiff.

"The bar's closed. You'll have to call the butler," she said from the hallway.

He heard the hotel room door open and her gasp. Then there was the sound of something being thrown and then an inhuman scream, loud and shrill.

Stefan already rushed outside when he realized why the scream had sounded so familiar.

He ran out to the hallway where the poisoned whiskey had burned Katherine's face into something he couldn't even recognize. Only her long, Pre-Raphaelite curls gave her away.

Stefan had pinned her against the wall, she was struggling. He was frozen. There was nothing he could do - so many choices to make and he couldn't bring himself to pick any of them. And so he stood there, breathing in the smell of Katherine's burnt flesh, when his little brother drove a stake into her heart.

She took what seemed an eternity to die. It could have only been seconds. Elena must have joined the scene at some point because on the periphery of his vision he could see her vomiting.

He collapsed against the wall, next to him someone else was breathing and little else. He didn't turn his eyes away from Katherine's body but dimly realized that it was Caroline. The witch's unsteady heartbeat came from the other room and he could hear Stefan consoling Elena on the other side of the hallway.

Katherine's corpse seemed to stare at him. There no eyes to stare at him with, they were gone, all gone. She was gone. She had left him again. It had been not her choice, this time, but that made no difference.

Stefan held onto Elena and for a second he could pretend that this dead thing was someone, something else but Elena was crying and Katherine had never cried.

For all physical appearances the crying girl wasn't like Katherine at all. She was what Stefan had always wished Katherine would have been. He could see it, still, Stefan's vision of that white house with its kind and beautiful mistress, with a gaggle of children and a kind heart. The children would never happen and the white house would not be full of black servants but with her Stefan still stood a chance to fulfill his dream.

As for him… the corpse in front of him cooled… he had always known that his dark mistress had a dark heart. There never had been a white house for him; no life, no religion, no father, no child - only her. He never had her and he never liked her but he couldn't imagine a world in which he didn't desire her. In which he would never find her again. In which he wasn't in love with her.

* * *

It took him a long time to pick himself up from the floor, away from her accusing stare. He hadn't helped her - he just let Stefan enact his own vengeance. He had been given the choice between her and Stefan and he had chosen his brother.

Next to him crouched against the wall was Caroline, shaking. Her eyes wide, she just stared at Katherine's corpse. She was still wearing her necklace. Pity. It would make sure that this was a sight she wouldn't forget any time soon. He looked at her for a moment, then picked her up and carried her to one of the bedrooms.

"That's enough," he said, crouching over her once he set her down on the bed. She didn't give him an answer, didn't even give him a look. He sighed as he looked down at her pathetic form, then considered the alternative of going back outside again, out to the hallway and sat himself next to her.

"Your ancestors would be proud of you."

It was true. For a Forbes to get rid of Katherine Pierce – whose specter had been haunting Mystic Falls since the Civil War in one form or another (mostly his though) was probably the moment of crowning glory of the town's little intrepid Vampire Hunters Club.

There was no response. Caroline just stared at an empty spot on the wall, lost in some distant horrible universe where vervain burned like acid through the face of her best friend.

"She would have done the same to you, you know."

He tried to make her… him… someone feel better about this. Katherine hadn't come all this way for tea. If Caroline hadn't caught her by surprise at the door most of them, probably all of them, wouldn't have left the hotel suite alive.

It was surprising that she hadn't brought reinforcements. Although she had been stronger than any of them, she wouldn't have liked the odds of facing them all alone.

He got up and called for Stefan, then bent over Caroline and forced her to look into his eyes. She made reluctant eye contact, angry that he made her leave whatever hell she was stuck in.

"Look. I know you're sad and stuff."

He tried to put some compassion into his voice but he knew he lacked the practice to make it convincing.

"But it's not like you were in love with her for one and a half centuries…"

He paused. Her eyes were open and aware but utterly devoid of sympathy. With a pang he realized that she cared as little for his feelings as Katherine herself had done. But there were more pressing matters and her eyes started to glaze over again.

"Pay attention," he continued. "This is important – Have you got any more vervain?"

"The only scent you can smell above the smell of horses and courage," she said, avoiding his eyes as she did. "The only one worth wearing."

There was a nasty little smile on her lips.

That's when Stefan burst through the door.

"What is it," he asked.

"Katherine's infantry," he answered turning away from Caroline and her cryptic cruel smile. "They can't be far behind."

"The bottled water," Caroline said behind him.

"Seriously," he asked as he turned back around.

"The coffee," she continued as if he hadn't said anything.

She got up, walked to the bathroom, and pulled out bottles of Mr. Clean and her hair stuff out of drawers and shelves.

"Those, too."

She walked over to a drawer in the bedroom and pulled out more bottles and containers.

He marveled at the amount of vervain she had managed to hide in this suite alone. With a shudder he thought about the apartment in New York.

"How many vampire armies did you plan on defeating anyway?"

The wicked smile was in place again.

"An army of only one."

It was pretty clear that she wasn't talking about Katherine.

* * *

They left the place a mess even with Stefan taking care of the bodies and moved to a different hotel. He didn't like the idea of yet another interchangeable hotel suite but was simply too tired to argue the ethics of "borrowing" some guy's penthouse for the greater good with the Trio of Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice.

Caroline crashed quickly in one the bedrooms, cooed to sleep with sympathetic noises by Elena and Bonnie. She might have cried as she fell asleep – probably about the depletion of her beloved vervain stash.

He joined Stefan who stood alone on the balcony, looking over the brightly illuminated city.

His brother didn't say anything. He just continued to stare at the lights as if they held some sort of answer. They probably did to him. He could just imagine the hogwash about humanity and the need to protect it.

"I'm sorry," Stefan said into the endless silence.

"What for," he couldn't help but ask.

"Killing Katherine."

"You're an awful liar."

He let out a laugh, empty of any emotion but sheer cynicism: "If you had to, you would do it all over again."

The truth did nothing to deter Stefan from his endeavor to show him his pity.

"I'm sorry it was necessary."

The fucker never knew when to stop. One more look into his puppy eyes and Damon just snapped. He grabbed him by the throat and bent him back over the balcony railing.

"I could've stopped you any time."

He let him go. To his dismay, he noticed that none of the sympathy, none of the pity, none of the love had been wiped from Stefan's face.

He looked away.

"So what's the next step of your great plan," he asked into the vastness of the night. "Become Stefan, the vampire slayer with his two slayerettes?"

There was no response. He briefly wondered if Stefan had left but a quick look revealed that he still stood beside him, his lips tightly pressed together. He waited for him to get the joke… but nothing.

He let out a brief laugh when he realized why.

"Wait? That's your great plan? I'm impressed. This is dumb even for you."

Stefan didn't take the bait.

Instead he asked something entirely out of the left field: "What are your plans for Caroline?"

"Why? Does your little band need a third back-up singer?"

Stefan didn't see the humor in that one either. He looked at him curiously.

"She has a good aim. And Elena and Bonnie are rather protective of her."

A little smirk appeared on his brother's face. "And she hid enough vervain right under your nose to defeat a small army."

The smirk grew wider, clearly he was enjoying this. "Or an army of one."

Damon thought of Caroline in the sun, radiant like life itself. He thought of with her arms full of liquid poison, her wicked smile, and the way she handed him the whiskey with her eyes two shards of ice. He smiled, taking pride in his creation.

"She's a magnificent bitch, isn't she?"

He turned his back to the city, leaning against the railing. He ignored Stefan's inquiring look for a long time.


	8. Chapter 8: Where are you going?

III.

**The Trick is to Keep Breathing**

Chapter Eight

**_Where are you going, where have you been?_**

* * *

She woke up when he came into the bedroom. He discarded his shirt, carelessly as if nothing had happened, as if everything was business as usual. She sat up in bed and looked at him quietly, daring him to break the silence first.

He stopped undressing and raised his eyebrows, challenging her. She felt the necklace on her chest, the one that meant that he couldn't make her do anything she didn't want to do anymore and that he knew it. She might have lost the power to poison him silently, the power to kill him just because she felt like it but she still had one option. She got up.

"I'm leaving," she said.

"And where do you want to go in the middle of the night? Flower shopping?"

He mocked her as he had done before but she could easily ignore him this time around.

"Home."

"You can't ever go home again," he said in a lilting voice, as if half-singing an old song. It was creepy.

"I can," she said. "And you can't stop me."

He frowned, then shrugged.

"So you're leaving without any closure?"

"Closure," she asked and furrowed her brow. "What kind of closure?"

He smiled and not one of his nice smiles either.

"I know you're angry at me."

She shook her head. She had gotten over it. Really, it had been nothing. He had been nothing.

"Really," he asked, obviously not believing her. "You had enough vervain to kill me many times over."

He looked at her expectantly: "I know you want to get even."

She bit her lip: "And? It's not like I can get even."

"I could let you."

"And why would you do that?"

"Do you have second thoughts about hurting me?"

He grinned widely, looking like the arrogant self-satisfied asshole side of his personality that she wasn't in love with at all. In a way this made it so much easier.

"For all the vervain you had, you've never used any of it."

"I was just biding my time," she said.

It sounded lame even in her own ears.

"You know…"

His smile was nearly sweet, serene. But its smugness was unbearable. She clenched her hands to fists and her fingernails painfully buried themselves in her palms.

He continued: "I never had any scruples about hurting you, Caroline."

Her hands clenched harder.

"You could say I enjoyed it. Do you remember when I broke your arm? I guess you wouldn't."

Another smile.

"It was such fun –"

She slapped him across his left cheek. His head turned briefly to the side but the smile stayed on. If anything he only seemed to become even more satisfied with himself. Her fingernails buried themselves in his other cheek, giving her a brief sense of déjà vu.

The scars on his cheeks healed nearly instantly and he still just looked at her, still hadn't hit back like she half-expected him to. And worse yet, he still smiled. She tried to knee him but he quickly took a step to the side.

"No cheating," he said, smiling, laughing and her fist hit him in the jaw.

Her hand hurt but if he had felt the blow, he didn't show it. Instead he raised his brows as if to say "that was it?"

That's when she became a messy flurry of kicks and thrown fists, and her only goal was to make him hurt, to wipe the smile off his face. Her hands struck every available surface of his skin, his chest, his arms, his stomach. She hit him in the chest and soon her hands were covered with his blood for some reason. How she managed to injure him like that, she didn't know. All that mattered were her hands, her feet, her body against his, causing him pain. Her hands encountered his more and more often, and suddenly his body was everywhere before she could even try to reach for it. His hands were across her body, painlessly and carefully whereas she was still wildly thrashing around.

The desire to destroy him, all of him, was slowly replaced with the desire to devour him, to be one with him. The blood splattered across her arms itched, she licked it off. Then she went tfor the dried blood on his chest and then his tongue tangled with hers, her arms with his. She scratched her nails across his back as they laid down on the bed, she still wrestling with him, still hurting him.

Drowning in bliss, in his pain, she was only faintly aware of his bite. Afterwards there was the familiar taste of copper pennies on her tongue again - along with a whispered, incomprehensible apology of sorts.

And that's how she passed out.

* * *

The morning sun woke her up. She felt sick and strange but there was no pain despite the dried blood on her arms and hands. She suppressed the urge to throw up when she realized it was Damon's. He lay in bed next to her, still asleep. His chest, outlined by the sunshine, rose and fell with every breath he took. Carefully Caroline lifted herself out of bed and treaded softly around the room to pick up her clothes and dress as quietly as she could. She kept glancing over to Damon but every time she looked, he was the same, sleeping like the dead.

Finally dressed, she tiptoed to the door. Her hand inched toward the doorknob. There was a sense of foreboding in the air, as if she had lived through this moment before. But the feeling of impending doom couldn't stop her. She knew that if she didn't leave now, she probably never would. Taking a deep breath she twisted the doorknob and then – as from far from away, as if it was already a memory – the door squeaked as loudly as a thunderclap. She closed her eyes briefly and then threw another furtive glance to the bed.

It was empty.

She turned back around and there by the door – so close, too close – stood Damon, smiling.

"Leaving already?"

She took another deep breath. Courage, she told herself. Faulkner had been wrong all along. Only courage was worth wearing – was the only thing that was worth anything.

"Yes."

He backed her against the closed door. His hands buried themselves in her hair, his fingers dug in her scalp.

"No kiss goodbye?"

He lowered his head and kissed her. She screwed her eyes shut in remembrance of a half-forgotten pain.

But it never came. The kiss was brief and tender.

She opened her eyes. He was looking at her. She wondered what he saw in her face because in his she could finally see so many things so clearly.

Desire. Expectation. Pride, maybe. Hope for something she knew she could never be, never wanted to be.

He cradled her face in his hands and his voice was rough.

"You're going to be magnificent," was what he said when he broke her neck.

_The End_

* * *

__

Thank you, to everyone who ever reviewed this story. You gave me the strength to continue.

And yes, I know. The ending, as much as I tried to foreshadow it, is pretty... yeah. But it's the only ending that ever made sense to me, so you're free bring on the rotten tomatoes.

PS: The title is also the title of a very lovely and very effectively creepy short story by Joyce Carol Oates.


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